Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection
by Elliot Bowers
Summary: Heather is trapped in a hospital that is run by dark, unspeakable creatures. Another universe away, another Heather is forced to come to the rescue of her other self. This can only be accomplished by returning to that infamous town...and beyond.
1. Chapter 1

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection (by Elliot Bowers)

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

"End of May"

music and vocal by Keren Ann

Chapter 1

…

1.

…

Feeling sick as Hell and weak all over, the girl awoke at sunset—even if there was no good reason to wake up at all in this damned place. Sundown, sunset, it always seemed to be either dark or getting towards dark around here. Looking at the girl, one could see the play of lean musculature beneath the skin of her tender neck as her head turned to look across the hard room. Over there by the opposite wall, blood-colored light from the sun glowed through the barred window to cast this place in soft reddish tones. No artificial lights were on just yet even though this place had electricity. How they still got electricity to this place was a wonder, given what the world was like outside. Where did the electricity come from? Were there still enough of those maintenance people out there to keep all of those overhead electric cables maintained? This was still assuming, of course, that there were real people running the machines and what-not. A person had to wonder if there was anybody alive out there at all. Then again true was how the creatures that ran this place were smart enough to find out how to supply electricity with their own strange machines, dark and strange engines churning in hot little rooms operated by creatures one wished only existed in nightmares. If only this was just a nightmare…

_Never mind that, _thought the girl to herself_._There was nothing the girl could do about what was happening—nothing about what was happening in this hospital-prison, nothing about what was happening to the world outside. It was all just not her problem at the moment. A person in her position was probably better off not following that path of thought at this time. Too many problems existed just here and now.

Sunset meant a lot of vaguely good things. It was the end of the day, for one thing. Meaning, it was the end of yet another space of measurable time in this place, having lived through it. Another day had come to pass in which _they _failed to do what they wanted to do to her. It was another section of time the girl lived through. They would not let her die. Her death would mean that they failed.

Who were _they? They _kept her here. _They _said it was for her own good at first—the ones that could pass for human, sitting behind desks and telling her father that all would be well here. _They _were the ones who ran this imprisoning institution. The unseen and omnipresent _they_, it was _they _who had control. It was _they _who kept her locked up.

It was not as if this girl was declared a prisoner or anything. It was nevertheless an awful lot like incarceration in some ways. People thought and said this was a hospital. Sure, it's a hospital…where they kept her imprisoned. They lock people up in jails too. So it may as well be prison. The girl knows the deal—having done spates of time in institutions for maybe pocketing things in stores that maybe weren't hers. Well okay, so maybe it _was _a little shoplifting? That's done, okay? The girl also used to smoke. Shopkeepers sold to her because police in her neighborhood aren't there to catch the act.

Smoking, shoplifting, There was truth in how both those habits were equally tough habits to stop. Now the shoplifting part of the deal got her in the local pokey more than once, kept until her dad picked her up. Again, the girl knew what being locked up was all about—didn't make this time any damned easier.

_They _at least let her have some amenities and privileges, like some old religious books to read and some notebooks to write or draw in. Those items were kept at a desk and a bookshelf, both also allowed in this room. The writing materials were atop the rectangular metal desk in this room. It was over there in the corner, left of the window—the barred window, more to keep her trapped in than keeping _things _out. The desk they had in here was a big old industrial-looking gray metal chunk that looked as if it came from the 1950s or something. It was like the thing was made to be like part of a tank. That wasn't surprising since how people from back then thought that ducking under office and school furniture would protect them from world-ending nuclear warfare. (Sure! Hide your scared ass under this sucker, and it'll keep you from being vaporized by a blast hotter than a gazillions suns put together!) The chair came from the same nuclear-warfare school of design—looking just as clunky and big as the armored-looking metal desk.

Next to the desk were the bookshelves. They were bolted to the wall and were a perfect metal compliment to the retro-military office hardware. In fact, other than the bed and the office chair, all the furniture in this place was bolted to the floor or bolted to the walls as if they were afraid the patient-inmate would do something ultra-violent like start throwing those things about. A desk with chair, a bed, some shelves, and that was just about it in this hard-tiled room, cast in tones of a dying sunset…

Was the girl violent? No, they generally need not worry as the girl was not feeling especially empowered enough to do anything destructive at the moment, at least not physically. This girl was not feeling up to doing much of anything for a while now other than breathing and thinking. This was maybe the third day the girl just wasn't feeling like getting out of bed and not do anything.

Didn't matter, because they do things to her sometimes—with our without her cooperation. They sometimes force-fed her foods that barely looked fit for human consumption. What do they care? Those ugly jokers weren't human. Sometimes they dragged her into a wheelchair and took her to the shower room where they scrubbed her body in chemical-smelling water. As dirty as _they _were, they insisted on keeping her body clean and passably well-fed. Never-mind it if the harshness of the chemicals was starting to make her feel a little dizzy. Creatures, what do they know about what's good for people?

Well, maybe they _should _care. It was about more about her body than her mind. They didn't care what happened to her mind. But if her body sickened and died, it would all be over for their screwy plan. They would probably not let her die, letting her end her life.

But her life was not over today, though, since this day was done as sunset darkened into night. All the things in here seemed even more shadowed and vague as the weak sunset was fading and dying. A dying sunset in a dying world… Yes, that was probably very appropriate.

Her sickness-blurred eyes barely focused enough to look at the soft darkened shapes of the metal furniture in this room as so her mind could imagine things being better. Soft gloom and obscuring shadows made it easier to pretend that this was really her bedroom back home. The girl could pretend that the shadowed hard-tiled floor was wooden instead of the square hard-tiled flooring of an institution. That metal desk could also look wooden in the gloom. And just maybe, some of her favorite plushie toys from childhood were just laid in the shadow of that desk. This place was maybe just a bit larger than her room at home, but it was close enough to just barely pretend. This was excepting the times when the girl thought there were…_things _in the shadows. Something was maybe…_sitting slumped against the desk. A person could perhaps barely see a shadowed shape. _

_Yes, it was a thing—a big oversized head atop a little torso, two atrophied arms and two legs attached. Maybe the shadow-thing was breathing just a little, too—taking in air and taking on life even if the thing was not really alive in the normal sense. It liked staying here even if this wasn't its world. Mmm, yes, it liked sharing the girl's air in this room, breathing the same air that passed through her delicate throat, held in her delicious lungs, breathed back out of her body. This shadowy being would also so much enjoy keeping female company, sweet delicious female company, to feed off of her in some way. It loved her fear too, making her air taste all the more sweeter. Maybe the rest of her is also sweet and delicious Let's have a bite of her firm young flesh and find out, hmm?_

"_N-no…_" came her voice, snapping out of that reverie. The shadowy creature was gone as easily as it had appeared—a figment of the shadows playing on her imagination, maybe. Hopefully... Hope in this place, that's not a likely thing.

Quivering fear prompted her to sit up in bed, making her aware of her body's weakened and altered condition. The girl did not need light to know what her appearance was like now, which was her not looking to be in the best of health. One could see just how physically wasted away the girl looked.

If that young female was slender before, now this was her looking downright skinny—not too good. Her once well-toned legs were slimmed thin, going into lean hips and torso. Too-slender arms and shoulders were getting towards being more bones than flesh. A narrow neck and prominent throat, a broad-cheeked face with a small pouty mouth and sunken hazel eyes that looked so dark these days. Hazel eyes, _witch _hazel—went a thought. Framing her face was her straight dark hair. Once upon a time, the girl used to style it be fluffy and blonde, but her hair had since gone back to its straight dark ways—night-colored hair that was kept cut short by _them_.

In addition to their hackneyed fashion-sense in cutting her hair as the blondness grew out of it, they gave her a long, thin-gray shirt-thing that clung to her body and barely went below the double-curve of her butt. Nothing was worn underneath since they didn't let her keep underthings. Panties were a thing for modesty that had her initially worried, and going without a bra could have been a problem support-wise if her tits were big enough to be of concern. Why the lack of underthings? It made things easier for _them _when it came to their examinations and a real nuisance for her at first. Then came her no longer caring. They did whatever they wanted in the end when it came to running things.

Yesterday or the day before—so hard to tell because time oozed along sometimes—some of the nurses come in while the girl was lying down. They stripped her as so the doctors could look at her naked body and put their rough, hot, inhuman hands to her abdomen—an abdomen which remained defiantly flat despite their efforts at making it swell with child. If her body showed any signs of developing pregnancy beyond just conception, they'd be able to track the size of the development at a glance.

They were trying to get her pregnant through some ways other than sex, doing things to her body. The girl knew what they wanted, didn't want it to happen to her. Behold the power of thought. It only made sense. After all, shadowy things could sometimes come to pass just by thinking about them.

Though the girl wanted to refuse the truth of it, nevertheless true was her being able to understand their language, hearing them talk about her giving birth. The girl _knew _what they said and thought. The girl _knew _what they wanted.

They wanted her swollen with child and just wouldn't shut up about it whenever they got to babbling, which is something they didn't do too often, thank goodness. _No way, freaks_, thought the girl. _No way am I going to get preggers with one of your kind. _

Preggers, Hell! They wanted the center of her body _infested _with something. Of course, just willpower alone could not stop normal pregnancies with normal people. For her, it was working. So there.

Whoever said this pregnancy was supposed to be normal? _They _were not normal. And just maybe, the girl was not quite a normal person herself—the girl herself not quite part of everyone's everyday idea of what a person should be. The girl just didn't _fit_, damn it. No wonder why so many people in the local neighborhood wanted to be rid of her. Why…?

…

2.

…

It was a long time in coming… Yup, they were bound to send her to the loony bin eventually, just to give themselves peace of mind. More like they were people who only thought with _pieces _of their minds—their emotions getting the best of them with all the new troubles happening in town. And they just _knew _the girl had something to do with those troubles.

The things that happened in the past, what _the girl _had done in the past, those things led to now. It is the past which gives birth to the present, and the present leads to the future. There was no going back to change what happened, so today couldn't be totally changed. Her today couldn't be changed because her yesterdays brought her here. And it was not really likely they were going to let her out in the future. Past, present, future, the three are locked together in one unholy circular trinity.

Some of things that happened around the girl also caused her father to look wrongly upon her. These were aspects of that girl which people kept trying to ignore in her presence but whispered about later. It wasn't that the girl could control all aspects of herself all the time. Things just happened, okay? So went the occurrences, so went the whispers, _Stay away from her. The girl can do things with her mind._

And if a person could come to accept that, they would also have to accept what was going on with the rest of the local landscape. Look at what was going wrong with the television and radio stations. TV was damned important to a lot of folks. So was radio. Now half the stations couldn't be picked up—nothing but hissing static snow on too many channels. Don't stare into that staticky snow though, because people were saying they would catch glimpses of stuff nobody ought to see.

The remaining channels had too many news reports about not going outside at night and evacuating immediately if the wrong kind of fog started rolling through town. That's not news. _Everybody _knows about fog. To Hell with the reporters' tomfoolery about evacuations and crap. So long as a person avoided the messed-up animals and strangers that came with the fogs, everything was fine.

So people kept saying everything was _just fine_. As long as people had gas enough to put in their cars to get to and from work, had beer in the fridge for after-work and could sit in front of their televisions, everything was still _just fine_—not as dandy as candy, but still _just fine _anyway. Work, beer and television, that's the mainstream holy trinity of reality. It was how the way things were, the way things are, and the way things are supposed to be forever, amen. To Hell with the reporters, and to Hell with any weird crap that happened otherwise.

But people still had the underpinning idea that everything was maybe _not _a-okay. About those animals… Messed-up animals started appearing in people's back yards. Okay… And wherever there those messed-up animals, people that weren't really _people _starting coming into town, going away as soon as they came, neat as you please. Yeah, we can deal with that.

Then it was as if the highways—those arteries of transportation—were being clogged off or severed by those fogs. The trucks that used to transport foods and fuels to the big stores and warehouses, they weren't coming around as often. Police cars and state troopers would sometimes go out of town and not make it back in a timely manner. Then there were the _animals…_and more of that damned fog to mark it happening …

Alright, alright…that's enough of that bull-crap. Forget about it. Just sit down in front of the television every day after work and knock back a few bottles of Bud in front of the teevee until dinner-time. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we work again. Don't start up any of that talk about _messed-up animals _and _weird people who don't quite look human. _And shut up about the fog, too. Only crazy people talk about that. Crazy people get locked up, like that little blonde-haired working girl, weird skinny little bitch…

The girl just couldn't help being short-short on money sometimes, short in height all the time. Between her part-time job and her dad's income—he wrote books and stuff—the girl most certainly had enough to keep clothes on her back and food to eat. Her appetite was normal enough (even if the girl just wasn't normal herself), eating the occasional bout of junk-food at fast-food joints…and still a lean thing. Something wasn't right about that, as if all of that food going into her was going into fueling some hidden _other _part of herself, probably the same hidden part that caused stuff to happen around her.

People noticed how the girl was able to conveniently be walking the other way or crossing the street to the opposite sidewalk _just before _some of those messed-up animal-things showed up. It was like something about her could tell when those things were coming, or the girl was causingthem to come around and knew where not to stand when there was animal trouble. And don't call 'em anything else but _animals_, or they'll lock _you _up in the crazy house too... With _her._

Other kinds of things happened around her. It wasn't like lightning bolts started flying or laser-beams flew out of her eyes or some crazy superhero crap like that, although some people who were quite a few bottles into weekend-night drinking sessions suspected that to be the case. It's little things. Clocks started showing wrong times in her presence. Lights would flicker. Some people looked at her face, her eyes, and said they started to feel kind of funny in the head. (Not _that _head. Get your minds out of the gutter!) Those light hazel eyes, it was like those eyes of hers could look into a person's mind and see what was going on. It was especially uncomfortable because some of the local men-folk could not help but to want finding out for themselves what the girl looked like beneath those clothes of hers. The girl was officially nineteen, but her slender petiteness and her delicate facial features made her seem too much like grade-school jailbait.

Who knows. Maybe that was _lesbian _jailbait, because they never saw her with male company on a social level. They never saw her with _any _company. Or maybe daddy kept her _satisfied? _His wife a lot of years back, people found out. The man had to do something about that urge, and something young and pretty was living with him already.

Nasty talk, foul talk… People talk. People talked like that. They talked like that a lot. They began to talk about her, calling her a _weird girl_ at best and other things at worst-all too often nasty words that parents tell their children not to say but with parents using those same words when talking about the girl. Along with that went _jailbait _regardless of her official, legal age. The older female neighbors are some of the worst, snickering at her, calling her a closet lesbian, little slut-witch… The girl was the talk of the town, not in a good way.

That talk had effects regardless of their falsehood. Neighbors in the apartment building started stepped over to the opposite side of the hall with _her _around. Outside of the apartment, at stores, cashiers would glance furtively at her and tried not to make eye-contact. People avoided her direct stare even while looking at her from shadows and out of sight.

Some people with too much free time nowadays had nothing better to do than look out their windows, spreading word about sightings of _her _and such by using their telephones. That is, for those telephones that still worked well enough for local communication. It was like some kind of unofficial busybody network. Instead of being called the Neighborhood Watch, they ought to call themselves the Witch-Watch. Witch-Watch, after all, is shorter than Weird Girl Closet Lesbian Slut Witch-Watch.

Witch-Watch seemed to start right after her taking the bus home after her daily part-time job—the bus because the subway trains were one of things not coming around anymore. Some of those too-much-free-time people would get things started. They look from building windows and pull down window-shades, as if the short aging buildings of this town had lots of square eyes, and they were pulling square eyelids shut just enough to give the illusion of sleeping. Then the blabbermouths in the buildings, the people living worm-like in those old aging structures, start blabbering away about _her _being on the block.

Since her father's job pretty much involved him making his own hours in front of computer keyboards when there was working electricity and an old-fashioned typewriter when there was not, he could actually sit around and wait for her to get home every day. He was waiting for her that day just like always. Except one day, there was a big difference.

The girl and her father were at the circular wooden table near the big-glass sliding doors, listening to her father her father say it. Maybe the girl knew what was going to be said. Expecting it, even. It still didn't make things any easier.

_I'm sorry, _he began in that too gentle but serious voice of his_. I cannot live in the same house as someone who could be so dangerous. Maybe you'll hurt me. Maybe you'll hurt yourself. You're my daughter, and I love you. What you need are people that can help you. Whatever is wrong with you has to be fixed. I've already called the hospital. They were waiting for your case, given what other people have been saying._

…

3.

…

That was then. This was now, her still being here. The misery of that conversation echoed in her memory and brought tears to her eyes even now. _Dad, _thought the girl, giving a loud sniff in this quiet and darkening room. Her father had her taken here…in the care of _them_. That was just too long ago. It was maybe a few months, maybe weeks. _They _didn't let her have a calendar, and with her not bothering to make any effort to count the days and nights as time stretched on into one long drawn-out malaise, a long taste of forever went nowhere physically but just kept going chronologically.

_Click-clackety… _So came the thick mechanical workings of the metal door. They were coming, this time in the form of nurses. The girl was able to sense their presence. They always made her feel just a little sick inside just by being close. _They _were now here to do things to her.

One of the nurse-things snapped on the light switch, a pasty corpse-colored hands using crisp fingers to do so. The light flickered on and stayed on—a circular light fixture set way up in the ceiling. This made the girl squint since it was so gloomy in here for so long. Did it _have _to be so darned bright all the time? Maybe they wouldn't care if someone somehow unscrewed the light bulb later.

Nope, that light fixture was set high in the ceiling and out of reach by ordinary means. That was as so a certain someone couldn't tie a bed-sheet to it and hang herself. It was also because a person could maybe think about suicide given the company. After all, the passably human nurses were not the best of people to be around. Hah, as if they were people.

They only looked like nurses. The girl didn't know what the Hell they really were otherwise, not sure of what they called themselves in whatever nasty world or alternate universe or time they came from. These thin and severe beings came in quickly and officiously, seeming so perfectly human in appearance at a glance. All of the nurses wore those tight white uniforms that resembled dresses, belted tightly at their slim waists and stopping at mid-thighs. The skin exposed by their uniforms, of legs and arms, was just too bleached white to be real flesh. Straight-cut hair framed their corpse-white and inhumanly flawless faces.

Now that was just their appearance at a glance. When a person _stared _at them, one came to notice things that were just not quite right—other than the fact that their uniform dresses were tad bit too revealing for people involved in the medical profession. They were nominally nurses, yet _details _were wrong. _The Devil is in the details, _as the saying goes_._

"_Lie down!_" rasped one of the nurse-things, her pale and stiff mouth barely moving. It wasn't that the nurse was sick or anything. They usually sounded like that, as if speaking through dead throats that did not quite belong to them. Squealed that same nurse, "_Cooperate!_"

Details… Bad details became visible to the girl once more, details that a person came to notice. The nurses' otherwise dead-pale skin was just a little bit bluish-gray in tinge. Faint spidery lines of blackened blood vessels existed just beneath the surface. Blue blood vessels—the veins—are visible in healthy people, _human _people, especially those with really light complexions. Light skin complexions? Heck, these nurses looked vampiric. The webs of blood vessels beneath their skin looked as if they carried some kind of dark oily other fluid instead of blood.

"Cooperate! Now!" hiss-rasped the same nurse-thing that rasped before. If at first you don't succeed, as in succeed with getting the girl to cooperate, rasp-rasp again.

"Alright already," began the girl, still looking at these nurse-things. "I'm cooperating. So… What the Hell do you ugly guyshave in mind for _me _today?" The girl laid herself back in the bed and put her hands atop thighs, knees together. Any other concessions to modesty were just not worth doing. Having gone without panties for this long just made her used to it. So they left her naked underneath this flimsy thing. So what? They were probably just going to strip her nude again anyway. Nude, clothed, whatever. They always did what they wanted to her. Besides, the girl just didn't have the energy to be bothered. "When are we going to get down to business, huh?"

The nurses had a way of communicating without talking and knew when to do what, as if they were all thinking with the same unseen mind. When they were sure of the girl being cooperative, another nurse knew to come in. This nurse—looking exactly like a clone of all the other pasty corpse-like nurses—was slightly hunched over in pushing a metal food-cart of some strange roundish design. If the food-cart itself looked odd, then the food atop it was odder still. More on that later. This other nurse was something else. One could notice a slight shape in her upper back. It wasn't an especially gigantic shape, not exactly like that hunchbacked bell-ringers from Notre Dame or anything. It was nevertheless _something_. The girl once had the idea that if a person _smacked _that humpy shape in the nurse's back, maybe something very bad would happen. Bad for the nurse, that is.

But that idea of physical shenanigans was pushed aside when this nurse pushed that cart closer. Off came the cover atop the cart's topmost shelf. "_This is food!_" hiss-rasped this nurse with the weird upper back, sounding worse than the others.

As to why a person had to be told what was on the cart, it was because being told was necessary. That nurse called it food even if a person couldn't quite tell what the fork that stuff was. It's like how kids draw weird abstract shapes in crayon and then add arrows from words labeling what the shapes are supposed to be, because such shapes were unrecognizable otherwise. Some arrows and words scrawled in crayon would be a big help right about now. _Food,_would go a label with a green arrow pointed.

Some other indication of what the stuff was would be a help because the girl didn't even know what it was otherwise. Atop the cart were big fleshy tube-things—hand-sized—that were blackened and coiled on the outside, with stringy red exposed ends. Along the sides of the tube-things were lots of little stumps that could have once been where thin legs or branches once stuck out. Right about now, the girl couldn't tell if those things atop the cart's tray were from something animal, vegetable, mineral or something weird in between.

They actually expected her to eat that? Yes they did. Last time, they served her small ball-like stuff that had stiff circle-parts at one end, almost like…large eyes. At least the things currently on the tray looked (ha-ha) sane enough, almost looking like tubular eggplants, stretching the word _almost_. Maybe this time, the so-called food wouldn't make her throw up either.

The girl wasn't really hungry, but that wasn't on account of the food that didn't look quite like food. The first few days of living here and all of the weird, stomach-twisting foodstuffs were a pain to deal with, anything being served worth eating just because the girl was hungry. But after a while... Food sort of stopped being a priority. It was just easier to just let things go for a while. People once made bad jokes about bad hospital food in the past, but this was ridiculous.

"_You eat,_" rasped the same nurse. Oh joy. Then again, nobody said that the nurses here had to be the most articulate bunch in the world. Or just maybe, even using just a sparing vocabulary was enough to wear out the insides of their seemingly diseased throats. "_E-e-ergh, ach!_"

"No way am I gonna take that stuff!" was the girl's response. "Vegetarianism is looking like a pretty good idea right about now." This was assuming the stuff was actually meat. Her eye-focus drifted to the odd morsels on the tray. The more the girl looked at it, the more animal-like the food seemed—though the girl had never even heard of whatever the Hell kind of animal _that _meat came from. "In fact, the threat of having to eat that actually makes anorexia look like a good idea."

"_E-e-ergh-ai-i-i…!_" wailed the most talkative nurse. The other nurses began to quiver and shudder, their bodies beginning to quiver. It was fairly obvious that the nurses did not take too kindly to her culinary commentary. They were quite unused to food critics attending this fine institution and were reacting accordingly! Or, it was just full and proper human beings that gave them problems. _Flick-flicker._The light-fixture overhead also seemed to agree—going on the blink.

_Oh great. Here we blow again, _went the girl's thoughts_. _By _again, _this was not the first time the girl had seen the nurses' illusion of humanity begin to shimmer.

Their white-hatted heads began to quiver as their sexy bodies began to quake. Sexy as they were, what happened with their faces was not so appealing—heads beginning to shake and shimmy, beginning to _vibrate. _In that blurry vibration were quick little eye-blink appearances of gap-fleshed visages that made a person sick to one's stomach. Being sick to one's stomach would come to pass even if one didn't sample the local fare.

_Flick-flicker… _The overhead light-fixture was really messing up, really going wrong. _Now _the girl began to worry. Her sassy confidence was all fine and dandy when it came to the general shenanigans put on by those nurses and the doctors. So what if the liked to give them an occasional bit of wit from a sharp tongue? Yet every so often, her antics perhaps went a tad bit too far. It was the powers-that-be in this hospital that reacted to her rebelliousness.

The nurses were just meat-puppets of that unseen presence. That unseen presence, that abstract force behind everything in this place, it was now going to make things happen no matter what the girl was going to do or say. _Blinkety-flick-flicker! _The lights became more erratic, and so did those so-called nurses. Now those once-human things weren't even trying to be human. _Flickety… _As the lights went crazier and crazier still, the nurse-things put their dead-cold hands on the girl's ankles and wrists. Their grips were too strong and too cold.

In came one of the doctor-things. Yet, to call that thing a _doctor _was probably like calling a chainsaw-swinging maniac a cosmetic surgeon. And let it be known that a chainsaw-swinging maniac is _not _a cosmetic surgeon, unless one considers the removal of head and limbs by chainsaw to be effective weight-reduction surgery. But any way you slice it, that thing which walked on into here was _not _really a doctor. Doctors are supposed to be _human_, damn it, and that thing just wasn't.

Though its body was dressed and covered in a once-white getup befitting a person of the medical community, its face was not hidden, the creature not even trying to hide its inhumanity. Its face was actually a jagged, bloody hole in a lumpy head—as if the center of its face was eaten away by disease and cancers. This was assuming the thing had a face to begin with. It had two arms and two legs—a human-shaped body clad in a grimy lab-coat smeared with pus—thoroughly unprofessional in a medical sense. That was why it was once-white and white no more, all of that nasty crap on it. This doctor thing also had breathing problems, like the nurses. Either their organs were too compromised for normal breathing, or they didn't take too kindly to breathing human air—perfectly good _human _air eating away at the not-so-good mouths and noses of these creatures. All the medical staff had breathing problems.

Then there were the doctor-thing's hands. The doctor-thing's chitinous hands looked as if they belonged on a cockroach instead of a valid practitioner of medical science. Those nasty hands reached for her.

Things happened quickly. Thin black needles poked out from the doctor-thing's insectile fingers and began dripping with a nasty dark fluid. Those needles at the ends of fingers pierced the flesh of the girl's abdomen.

The resulting pain came with an intensity that seared her body inside and even her mind—an intense, burning feeling that spread from her midriff and outward, overcoming her completely. The girl writhed in pain, unable to lie still as the physical, psychological and spiritual agony overtook her completely. Her body writhed in reflex while her mind wished to be somewhere else. Writhe and resist as much as the girl tried, there was…_no escape, at least not in the physical sense. Darkness began to close over her vision as the madness of this moment. Everything did hurt. Everything was so full of suffering and fear. Pain and suffering were two demons that dragged her into an unconsciousness that was a welcome escape from everything that was her reality at the moment. That was an escape enough…_

…

_Some time ago, when the girl was living her life before all of this, there was a nice little radio in her room. It was kept on top of the raised desk where the girl had her things for writing and drawing. A little radio was better than trying to buy one of those expensive portable electronic things that most young people her age owned. And music on the radio is free. A person can also record some of the better tunes that some of the not-so-mainstream stations played. _

_On the two days of the week when the girl doesn't have to work, the thing to do was sit atop the tall stool at the raised desk, listening to music from the radio waves or from recorded cassette tapes while reading. The girl liked reading silly nonsense tales of the occult—about ghosts and witchcraft, monsters and such. And when not reading, the girl took to doing some writing in her diary. The girl used to do a lot more drawing before, but this year saw her tendencies more towards penning her thoughts instead of drawing them. _

_There was this one time when the radio played this really nice song which put a nice smooth beauty to her mood. It was this tune that was just so sad and so relaxing at the same time. The lyrics just played in the background, the woman on the radio singing…_

_Close, your eyes_

…_and roll the dice_

_Under the board, there's a compromise._

_If after all_

…_you only live twice._

_Which lies the red road to paradise?_

_Don't say a word_

_Here comes the break_

…_of the day._

_And white clouds of sun _

…_raised by the wind _

…_of the end_

…_of May._

_Close, your eyes_

…_and make a bet._

_Face to the glare of the sun-set._

_This is about_

…_as far as we get._

_You haven't seen me disguised yet._

_Don't say a word_

_Here comes the break_

…_of the day._

_And white clouds of sun _

…_raised by the wind _

…_of the end_

…_of May_


	2. Chapter 2

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection

by Elliot Bowers

"Give It Up"

music by 8mm

vocal by Juliette Beaven

Chapter 2

...

1.

...

Heather's mind drifted up from that place and time. They tried doing something to her. Too bad for them it wasn't working. It only succeeded in making her feel sick as Hell. Things scampered and walked about in the gloom. They were dark figures, things made out of shadows. With the doctors and nurses gone, these other things had free reign to do all the stalking and slithering they wanted. The shadows vaporized out of this reality as the girl…came out of sleep.

This room was still steeped in the gloom before sunrise, light from a streetlamp glowing through the apartment bedroom window. Heather's darned alarm clock wasn't the thing that woke her up. It was something else.

What else? Right now, a thin bedcloth covered her sleep-time nakedness, a fan at the window blowing in summer-night wind. It had to be a fan because air conditioning wasn't cheap and would've jacked up the electric bill. Heather slept in the raw by choice, not due to a hospital garment having been ripped off of her. In that other place, they did that as so the doctor-thing could do things to her.

Worried, Heather pushed off the bedcloth and stood up—seeing herself by the low light through the window. There was light enough to also see that her body did not have the starved-waif look…well, no more skinnier than usual. True, the girl was as lean as always—a slender and petite physique that always gave everybody the idea that Heather was the age of jailbait. I'm nineteen, alright! Her pert-featured face with its pouty lips, framed with playfully short-cut fluffy blonde hair, only solidified the illusion of immaturity.

Most important now, looking down at her own skinny body, was how there were no more holes in Heather's body than usual. So…go back to sleep?

No way was this girl getting a good night's rest after that crazy crap in the crazy house. At the same time, no way was Heather just going to stand around like some art-house nudist. Nudists are weirdoes, and weirdoes got on her nerves. Crystal-hippies, witch-ladies, hippie-dressed college kids, goths (oh those goths), well-dressed business-types with perverted tastes in entertainment, they all came to her place of work.

Work… Heather had to work tomorrow. Or make that, later on today—because it was just a scant hour before sunrise. Bare feet padding on the smooth-wood floor, the girl went over to the place next to her bed where a robe hung on a hook. (It was a bath-robe, not a witch-robe. Witches are weirdoes, weirdoes wear robes, and—again—Heather was not a weirdo. Never mind the robe.) The robe covering her body, the cloth belt tied around her slim waist, Heather went over to the light switch and flicked the thing on. Doing so revealed her bedroom.

There wasn't much to see, a little apartment bedroom with not space. To her right was her bed—all comfy and normal. Some of her artsy stuff—some drawings and a poster for a French movie—were on the otherwise plain wall. The left side had her raised desk and stool, two stuffed dolls atop it. If Heather was to turn around, there would be sight of her grooming table with foldable slats over the mirror to the right of the bathroom door. Oh yeah, small as this bedroom was, it still had its own attached bathroom. Some years ago, Heather had to get permission from the apartment's super to deal with the mirror in there too—having it unbolted and removed.

About mirrors…. To Heather, there was good reason to them cover up or remove them altogether. The girl just didn't like them. Science explained mirrors as being well-reflected light. Since human eyes take in light, reflected light is just a reflected image of reality. Religious lore said other things about that, creepier things—like how one should cover mirrors whenever somebody dies. Said those ideas, under certain conditions, dead people on the other side could use mirrors to lure people over. And reflections maybe weren't just bounced light. Maybe there was another side to reality. And maybe on that other side were evil imposters…

Too weird it may seem, but Heather knew all about that kind of weirdness and was perfectly happy to live a non-weird life these days. Any little steps to avoid weirdness was good. So it was probably best to just keep mirrors all covered or removed just in case. So Heather doesn't like mirrors and that's good enough, so shut up and don't ask.

Four o'clock in the morning… Four hours from now, the nineteen-year-old girl would have to catch the downtown bus to get to work. Royalties from Dad's published novels paid the rent and most of the electric, but Heather still hung onto her job to pay other little bills—also having maybe a few hundred bucks left over. None of them had to do with car payments, though the guy responsible for handling the royalty checks suggested that Heather buy such a vehicle. That was pointless because Heather didn't even have a license or know how to drive. No one taught her.

Her Dad couldn't do that teaching, not in this world. He was dead—killed, in fact. Mom died too many years before that… Trying to remember that time in her life was a confusing affair that sometimes gave her headaches.

So forget it. Her parents were dead. The girl worked her job and got money from dead Dad's books to pay her bills. After work was time enough to read some books bought on sale and listen to music, maybe go shopping for clothes every so often…and that was just about it. Wake up, work, relax and sleep. Wash, rinse, repeat. It wasn't much of a life, but it was Heather's life. It was also a normal life—which was what Heather found to be just fine…most of the time.

Yes, real life was just fine without encroaching weirdness, like the stuff of dreams and nightmares. Real life didn't have nurse-monsters that were all messed up and doctor-monsters with needles in their fingers. Real life didn't have hospitals run by invisible things. Real life isn't supposed to have monsters. Not usually.

Such was what Heather was thinking, moving to perch herself atop the tall stool—bare knees primly together and with her hands gently atop the raised desk to feel the surface. Fingertips stroked the smooth polished wood, her eyes regarding the surface of the furniture. This was solid. This was real. Dreams and nightmares are not. A person can't feel the hardness of reality in those sleep-time visions. Then Heather noticed that her diary was turned upside down.

Her diary—her own little personal book—was turned around as so its top was facing this way. It was as if somebody reached through the wall, took it away to do something with it, then put it back. Of course people can't reach through walls. But somebody moved it. Heather just knew it. It was the super, wasn't it? Pervie old guy... Or was it the hired help? Whoever the heck it was, this suddenly made her feel so mad!

Her otherwise cute face contorted in anger. The girl thought about getting her pocket knife from her nightstand and maybe doing something to whoever dared invade her place. "Who did it!" shouted Heather aloud to this quiet little apartment bedroom.

Other than the steady hum of the fan, there was no response. That fan against the window kept up its steady-heady thrum while the light shone quietly down on her. Meanwhile, Heather's attention returned to her violated diary. The girl opened it to see if something was actually wrong.

Something was. Someone wrote something in her diary. Worse still, somebody copied her own handwriting almost exactly—neatly printed letters that were all slanted straight and to the side as written by a careful right hand. Her Dad taught her to write that way. Everybody else had chicken-scratch handwriting, but not her, not even in her own private messages. Her vision hazed over with anger in reading whatever the Hell this somebody had written.

I'm really, really sorry about doing this, but there's no other way out for me. I could say "me" and really mean just another you. After all, you and I really the same person. We're just in different places. You would do the same thing as I would, and I know it. I had to step into your life and write this. Again, I'm sorry, but it has to be this way. Nobody wants to die. I don't want to die, which is what will happen if I don't get out of here. So you'll maybe just have to accept what this is about. We're the same kind of person, and you'd understand.

They are trying to do here what they failed to do in your world. They are failing so far. Since your world is still normal, it means that they haven't won. But they won't give up. You know about the kinds of things that can happen with us. You remember what happened when they tried last time.

If seeing this written madness in her own penmanship wasn't enough, then that last line certainly was rapidly approaching the border of what Heather could take. You remember what happened when they tried last time, that was the most troubling sentence of all in the message. You remember, you remember…

Heather didn't want to remember. Weirdoes, this was about the weirdoes. The witch-people, the crazy cult-people, those kinds of people who do crazy stuff that should get them locked up in the loony bin but aren't locked up—giving them the perfect opportunities to make Hell for everybody else. Weirdoes killed her Dad.

Whatever, thought the girl to herself in closing the diary. The diary? It was not just any diary. This was her diary. Somebody with some screws loose in their noggins got into her bedroom—probably while Heather was away at work—copied her handwriting and wrote some crazy stuff in it. Didn't they do background checks and stuff on janitors and whoever?

The only other explanation was that Heather herself had written it. Who knows, maybe the girl was too drunk one night to remember doing it. It was two years yet before Heather could legally buy alcoholic beverages, but that didn't stop her from getting her hands on the stuff anyway.

So it was one of two things—either Heather herself wrote it, or some stalker-guy who worked for the super did it. Nobody else could have done it. If it just happened this one time, it was nothing to worry about. Perfectly normal and with no supernatural explanations involved: no ghosts, goblins, ogres, demons, vampires, or even those damned bug-eyed gray-skinned aliens need apply. Of course, being staggeringly drunk or loony-bin crazy was not normal-normal, yet it was otherwise normal and explainable in a normal and explainable world.

With that, the girl left the raised desk and went to turn off the light. Off went her robe again before getting beneath the sheets. There was going to be another day of work tomorrow. Falling asleep on the job was something Heather didn't want to do.

…

Her morning was done in a hurry, more or less. Exercise made her feel better and more prepared for the day. After her Dad was killed, a psychiatrist at the downtown health clinic also told her that exercise would help her avoid having to take medication for her problems. After a too-long shower, the girl dressed herself comfortably for what was going to be yet another warm day—jeans-pants and a sleeveless middie top. Both jeans and top fit her perfectly, the outfit exposing just a bit of her midriff. Heather definitely had the figure for it, so why not? That, and these sort of clothes were cheap, plentiful and always on sale. Cheap clothes for cheap-looking girls, was what a certain female co-worker once said. Heather's response to that was a smirk and an extended middle digit.

The girl's breakfast was a nutritionist's nightmare—a big bowl of sugary cereal with chocolate milk and a great big cup of caffeinated wake-me-up. The combination of caffeine and sugar really made her feel jazzed up in a hurry and ready for anything! Yeah, and after work, another cup o' joe would keep her going. Hey, at least this was her eating breakfast at all. Some people skipped it altogether.

Outside the apartment, the cross-town bus was how Heather got to work, her job at the mall. It was just as easy to take the subway—weird as it was for a no-name city this small to have a subway system. Faster and more convenient though it was, the girl just didn't want to take that route. Heather had a really bad experience with subways two years back that wasn't worth having again. So the bus it was.

...

2.

...

The big enclosed shopping mall looked exactly like all the other shopping malls in this country. Outside, the place looked like several gigantic art-deco warehouses fit together at bad angles. Around the huge place was a lake-sized parking lot to fit the cars of all the many customers who presumably filled the place. Not many cars dotted the parking lot, mostly those employees who worked in the place itself. The cleaning and maintenance people were mainly done before-hand. After that, the people who worked and owned the rented-space stores came in an hour prior to actual business hours. Heather was the only person who got off the bus to get into the mall. Those few other people on the bus worked elsewhere in town.

…

And if the outside looked exactly like every other shopping mall, it only made sense that the inside did the same, was the same. Indoors was a wide-long polished floor, the ceiling being three stories up even if there were only two stories to this place. Up there on the second floor, a person could walk around and look past a glass-and-steel railing to down—seeing other shoppers walking around down here.

The escalators were on, but Heather took the stairs anyway. It was just one flight of stairs after all. Some time ago was some news-story about people who lost their toes to a badly designed escalator. Her sneakers weren't the thickest things in the world and would give no protection against the voracious metal teeth of poorly made moving stairways. Not that Heather saw too much worth in toes (whatever the heck toes are good for anyway), but it was a good idea to keep them attached to her feet. Whoever wanted to be somebody without toes? It would make wearing sandals impossible.

Hey, now that's a reason! Toes are good for sandals! Imagine being a toeless somebody and walking around. People would start pointing and looking. That would be…unless everybody in the world was without toes. There'd be no point in pointing at somebody without toes in a world where everybody was without toes, would there? Anyway… Want not, risk not.

Heather made her way up with her toes intact. Up on the second floor, most of the security gates were already rolled up and away from the shops' doors. This was including the gate for the bookstore where Heather worked. All the lights were on in there beyond the glass-and-wood doors. The girl sighed and pulled one of the heavy doors open before going in.

...

A bookstore sells books. Being a bookstore, this place was no exception to that statement. Left and right were shelves with lots and lots of books on all kinds of subjects ranging from Assyrian Anthropology to Zoological Zephyrs... Okay, so that last subject was made-up. Still true was how this joint sold books for every category and genre that the reading public was presumed to want and would probably keep wanting. This bookstore also sold magazines, novellas and—good lord—even those books on tape for folks who swore they had no time to read real novels. Shelves all along the wood-paneled walls, two shelves in the middle, and one long counter at the end with a shelf behind it, this place was books galore. Oh, and there was a pistol kept underneath the cash register in case a customer became too disagreeable for safety's sake.

About the books-galore phrase, one had best not mention it to the boss—lest it end up being the store's next slogan. As if the store's slogans weren't crappy before, thought Heather. Her boss tended to do that, use crappy slogans.

Her boss entered through the back door, the employee entrance. Speak of the...! Ah, never mind. Her boss wasn't the devil no matter how much a worker wanted to believe otherwise. And it was a bad idea to speak of the devil in general, at least Heather thought.

Now when a person thinks boss, a person tends to have in mind some pot-bellied, cigar-chomping balding guy that dressed as if he doesn't really know how to dress himself. A boss wears a wrinkled buttoned-down shirt (opened at the top without a tie) and has great big pants held up with a belt that looks as if it was taken out the engine of an eighteen-wheeler truck. So, a boss is supposed to be big and wide on everything—big gut, big mouth, and with big wrinkles in clothes. A boss was usually a man-thing.

Heather's boss was the physiological and sexual antithesis of that. Her boss was more of a woman-thing rather than a man-thing as far as the girl could tell from appearance and voice. Her boss was also very much on the magazine-model looks of things—a tall, slim blonde-haired woman dressed in the modern-office fashion for females—an outfit consisting of knee-length black skirt and open jacket, worn with an open blouse. Her boss' small dark shoes weren't exactly stiletto heels, but nobody said that low pumps couldn't be just as sharp and severe-looking.

The tall boss-lady was friendly enough most of the time…. It was just that Heather tended to be wary of tall-bodied, blonde-haired, blue-eyed women in general. Never mind the fact that that Heather dyed her own hair a sunny shade and somebody said her eyes looked bluish under some lighting conditions. And about folks being tall, wasn't most everyone taller than her short self?

"And so you've returned!" cheered the tall boss-lady before beginning her usual employer-to-employee briefing. Heather thought of them more as being rants. "There is not terribly much to speak of this morning besides the usual… Oh, that would be except for a slight maintenance issue. If you have the chance, make a call to maintenance about the changes they made in climate-control settings. Now I'm off! Tell Meg I said hello."

"I'll do that," said Heather, doing her best to keep wariness out of her voice. Her boss then clicked her way out of this bookstore. A boss just had to run the store, not having to be around when things actually have to get done. Whatever.

…

Heather was just going about this day normally up until maybe two hours after midday. All the books were neatened after the lunch-time interlude. Noon-time was really busy, when the business types with multi-hour lunch-breaks came in to browse around before buying their mystical self-help books and glossy business magazines…along with the occasional porn novel.

The question was, why were so many neat-and-professional-looking women buying these things? Heather once picked up one of those things and did a chapters' worth of reading just to see what all the hub-bub was about. Why were so many people all hot and heavy for the stuff?

Oh yeah, Heather found that out soon enough—her light-hazel eyes going all wide upon reading some of the rather explicit descriptions of what went on in a romance novel. Screw the romance part, those things were word-porn! What else was it, when the emphasis was on horny people kissing each other up before doing the old in-out-in-out. That was porn according to just about every other definition. And then there they were, those prim-and-pretty office-types, coming into a bookstore and buying dirty books in broad mall daylight—books about impossibly frilly women just wandering about and hankering after just-as-frilly gentlemen. Things got not-so-frilly when scenes involved those women riding the hot-sausage express, which happened a lot. Porn novels, that's what they were—and Heather didn't care if they really were officially classified as romance fiction.

Ah well… When a person's job was to dress up in business clothes, sign papers and look important at meetings, a person can just about do whatever the Hell he or she wants—even buy porn in the middle of the day, in a building full of people.

That was earlier, the midday rush. The business types were gone. Now the mall was going to be practically abandoned until the after-school kids started showing up. Her boss was off and away—being one of those business-types, after all. Forget about taking a lunch break. It wasn't too long before the evening shift would come in and take over—Jimmy and Meg. Jimmy was a big burly guy who dressed business casual. Meg was a bitch.

Well, okay… Meg deserved a little more description. Meg about Heather's age who, surprise-surprise, was blonde. Except Meg was a natural blonde, even if her bosom size seemed unnatural for someone so slim otherwise. Meg also dressed herself up a bit more—choosing the business-type outfits that the boss wore.

So that made for the co-worker combination that Heather knew the closest. There was Jimmy the big-muscled guy, and there was the slim yet well-endowed female blonde. Heather sometimes jokingly referred to them as being Ken and Barbie…even if the Barbie part of the pair didn't catch onto the reference at first. Uh-huh…

Until those two showed up to take over after her shift, this was going to be Heather sitting on a raised stool behind the counter and not doing much in particular. Nobody walked around along the second floor walkway outside right now. Nobody else was around this place except herself. And when in a bookstore, why not sample some of the goods? There were chances here to read stuff that the girl wouldn't pay for until it was on sale. Some of those texts on black magic were looking interesting right about now.

It took just a minute to grab one of those books off the shelf and come around back to her spot behind the counter. Now, a person unfamiliar with subject matter on the occult would think that black magic referred to African American culture or something. Black magic from…black people? Nope, politics would be the last thing this book was about…even if that voodoo was from Haiti and stuff. Voodoo wasn't all that was in this book. This book chosen by Heather was also about ancient gods, worshipping those ancient gods, forces of the universe at work, stuff like that. Blink-flicker.

Did the bookstore lights just…? Staring at them only left a glare-induced impression on her eyes. Never mind. It was probably just her imagination—wouldn't be the first time the girl had to ignore something that didn't seem right. A shadowy shape moved between the shelves.

Nope, that's it! Wonky lights were one thing. Shadowy figures seen out the corner of one's eye was another. Heather bookmarked her place in the book, almost slamming the book onto the counter. Now something had her pissed. Something was just not right about what was going on. Somebody must be playing a joke on her.

"Is this a joke!" exclaimed the girl aloud, walking between the shelves of books. "'Cause if this is a joke, jokes are supposed to be funny. You're…not…funny, Meg! You're being an idiot, that's what!"

Yeah, Meg would pull something like this, Meg the Bitch. Meg the Bitch once left a fully dressed mall mannequin left behind the counter one morning, leaving Heather to think somebody was actually dead. That wasn't funny, either—not then, not now, and probably not ever. Meg thought it was, because Meg was a bitch after all.

Stalking the bookshelves, Heather suddenly regretted wearing her usual outfit to work, a top that bared her midsection and exposed her arms to the new cold. It was suddenly really chilly. That meant someone tweaked the air-conditioning. Her boss did say to talk to the maintenance people about that. Otherwise, screwing with the climate controls could just be more shenanigans.

"You want funny? Okay, how about this?" Heather came around a corner of the shelves near the double-doors. "Why'd the baby cross the road?" For dramatic effect, the girl gave pause. "Because it was…stapled to the chicken! Ha-ha…! Wasn't that funny? Wasn't that a real knee-slapper! Wasn't it? Wasn't it!"

The girl was talking because there was the idea that somebody was listening. Somebody was here. It was that whole eyes-on-your-back feeling which was giving her the willies. Just because Heather couldn't see anybody didn't mean that this place was totally empty—besides herself, of course. Nope, nobody's here! There's nobody else here but us porn books mixed with everything else.

"Okay… Fine," said Heather, crossing slim arms on her abdomen. "Go ahead and have your fun, Meg. I'll just get to the security office and have 'em look at the security tapes and stuff. Then you'll really be in deep trouble…with our boss. You know how much the boss hates screwing around at work. You and Jimmy screwing around, and I don't mean figuratively! This time, you won't be able to butt-kiss your way out of trouble! How do you like those apples?"

Meg would probably say, I like those apples just fine, thank you very much. However, nobody answers if nobody's there. It takes a body of some kind to talk, after all. When nobody answered, Heather began walking back over to the counter at the far end of this place—passing between the shelves. Still, there was that feeling of something. Heather thought a radio at a nearby electronics store was beginning to make some noise. Maybe it was some music mixed in. It was…hard to tell…

…

Static and drone, a distant ocean of hissing, something electrical wasn't working quite right. Or maybe it just wasn't getting enough of what it needed to work correctly. Throwing the electronic equivalent of a sissy fit, the thing was making a low rushing noise that was full of nothing. That was…until one could pick out the seductive rhythm of an electric guitar, drum and modified bass. Said a sad and sweet woman's voice through the little radio's speaker:

Don't you give it up for me

Don't you open up your soul

…and drown in your mi-se-ry.

We all know you don't want help.

You want some com-pan-y.

Don't you give it up for me.

Just how long…can you bleed?

Just how long…do you need?

Just how lo-o-ong

…can you blee-e-e-ed!

Don't you give it up for me.

Bandage up your arms again.

No one will see the blood but you.

Won't you get up off your knees?

It's time…to…run!

Don't you give it up…for me.

Just how long…can you bleed?

Just how long do you need?

Just how lo-o-ong

…can you blee-e-ed…!

And with that, the hissing and pissing of electromagnetic noise from somewhere else took over. No more of that pretty song played. It was just a great deal of lost static…


	3. Chapter 3

A Pale Reflection (by Elliot Bowers) Chapter 3

_A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

"In The Pretend World"

music and lyrics by Scarling

Chapter 3

…

1.

…

When a person is tired from work, a person is tired from work. That's it, no excuses. Heather was tired…from work. True, all the girl did was deal with book stock and very occasionally help relieve customers of their money (in exchange for reading materials, of course). It wasn't much compared to what most folks do for a living—like those people who worked those gritty industrial jobs at the chemical refinery along the highway. (Those places always reminded Heather of those clunky sci-fi movies where post-apocalyptic mutants lived and stuff…) Alright, so Heather didn't exactly work in a labor-intensive environment. Nor was the girl exactly a post-apocalyptic mutant from the future. Still, the girl was bone-tired, no bones about it.

Why was that? That was because Heather was tired from just being at work. Tiring was putting on this whole fake attitude of being perky and placidly pleasant whenever customers _did _come around. Hey, don't blame her for that. Blame her _boss_. Who the fork uses the word _placidly _in real life? Her boss did. Her boss also did a lot of things worthy of disagreement. But when the boss-lady has something to say, everybody has to listen. Heather was also more than willing to say a few things about her boss—such as where her boss could go. Make that some place warm and full of fiery brimstone. _Thump… _

While Heather was locking the front door, something fell behind her—a footstep? Suddenly there was an excuse to not feel tired anymore. If something was dropped, it meant that _someone _was here.

The girl dipped her right thumb and forefinger into a jeans-pocket for her switchblade. Yes, Heather carried a switchblade. And yes, it was legal. It was used for cutting open boxes at work, okay? Except this time, it was maybe going to cut some living flesh. Someone had been in her apartment. _Flick! _A press of the button, and the sharpened but broad little blade was ready to rock.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the only thing Heather could brandish her weapon at would be her diary—which had somehow fallen atop her kitchen table. The table wasn't actually in the kitchen because this apartment had a kitchenette instead of a real-deal separate place for eating. Anyway, the diary was there instead of being _in her room. _

Heather clenched the blade, both fine-boned hands forming into angry fists. _Oooh…! _Who was in her home! Then Heather remembered the other person, the one who kept leaving those messages. That other person must have been here in some way, shape or form.

That _other _person was not here physically, at least. A person can't cut somebody who wasn't around to be cut, so Heather snapped the switchblade back closed and pocketed it. Returned to its hiding place, the little blade was flat enough to not make a noticeable shape in her otherwise snug-fitting jeans, like the folded money and ID carried to and from work. Heather didn't carry a purse to work. Other than carrying money, her work ID and the occasional spare tampon or two, there just wasn't much for her to port around. A purse would just end up being some great big mommy-sack that snatchers could take. They couldn't snatch her purse if there wasn't a purse to snatch.

Theft was preventable. Yet what about breaking and entering? The girl couldn't do a damn thing about what couldn't even be seen. So why bother? It was easier to not care than to care.

So it would appear. To _not _care would seem easy. And to get rid of the reason for her caring was easy enough. All Heather had to do was reach into her diary for the sheets of paper with that _other _person's messages and rip them out. Maybe then go out to the fire escape and burn 'em.

Heather sat herself down at the kitchen table and reached for her own diary, snatching her hands back as soon as fingertips touched the glazingly cold thing. Was her diary cold? Do polar bears go surfing on glaciers? _Hells _yes.

"_Mmph!_" went Heather, pressing her lips to keep from getting loud. Seconds were spent in rubbing her cold fingers against her thighs, a shudder passing through her body from the extreme iciness. This was a warm day, and _nothing _was supposed to be cold like that unless it was in a nuclear-powered freezer full of mint-flavored ice-pops, in the middle of the North Pole, during the depths of deepest winter.

Alright, let's try this again. The girl gritted her teeth in _carefully _reaching for the too-cold diary. It made her shudder and want to go get some socks to use for improvised mitts, but it was bearable. Her fingers were just _so cold _though.

Now the last time somebody messed with her diary resulted in a new entry after the latest one. And look at that—another entry. It was her diary, and it was almost her handwriting. Almost was not the same as exactly, though. The person was _claiming _to be another Heather, but the real deal was sitting right here, baby. This was Heather being here and not _there…_wherever the fork _there _was. The real deal also did not appreciate what was going on. Said this next diary entry:

_You don't want to know what's going on with me. Now you don't want anything to do with my life. But I have to live my life even if no one else does. Not even me. It hurts. And it hurts every day. It's getting worse and not going to get better. There is no way out because everyone else thinks that this is the best way. If you walk away from me and don't help, there wouldn't be anyone else. Please don't leave me, even if you want to do that._

_If you don't want to help, things could happen to make you help. What's happening here is not natural and should not happen. They are making it happen and making it worse by trying to use me—trying to use my body for their purposes. Do you remember what they tried to do to you once before? That is what they are trying. But this time, they just might win unless something stops them. You will have to stop them. _

A cold-stop feeling filled her on reading this. After the first few sentences, the girl didn't _want _to finish reading it. Ah, but doesn't curiosity run in everybody? Maybe it's a sadistic impulse in everyone—this desire to see pain and suffering. Even decent people can behave like horror-movie gore fans when nasty stuff happens in real life.

Consider car accidents along highways. People driving along the are always glad to slow down in contemplating awful accident scenes. Ooh… Is that a _stretcher? _Look at that red spot on the sheet. And, oh delicious-delicious, there's quite an _interesting _streak of blood, the good old red stuff… It's a good long juicy smear right along the road behind the accident. The dude must've been _creamed _by that accident…. Yup, people _say _they don't want to look at nasty and gross things. Then more people could slow down and look.

Like slowing vehicles passing a scene of awesomely gross death, Heather found herself reading and re-reading the same message again and again some more. It took an effort to stop herself. What was the point in trying to read through the craziness? It was real. So was the person who wrote the darned thing.

…

The message was about what _they _did. _They _were anomalies, that was what _they _were. That place where they seemed to come from was an accident, too. The fact that this message came to this Heather from somewhere else was just some random piece of luck. It would be _bad _luck in this case.

What was luck, really? The invisible machinery of the universe had its own means of keeping everything neat and orderly. Oh yeah, those invisible wheels and gears keep whirling and working to make sure that gravity always worked to keep planets in orbit and keep everybody from floating off into space.

Even seemingly random things were part of the machinery that made up the universe. A person could be happy, healthy and wealthy one second in playing the stock-market—which was just maybe a tad bit more lucky and both by skipping down to Vegas and betting on a lucky number. The next minute, some kind of insane cancer can send a person into doom, destruction and death. Luck was a part of the way things are.

However, this left true the impression that the invisible machinery of the universe was perfect_. _People also assume that gravity will always work and keep the Earth from doing a mad-cap dash into the depths of outer space. People would always assume that one plus one equals two. Maybe the sun would stop shining at some far-off point a few billion years into the future. Who cares? The scientists said the sun would keep up the good work until then. Oh yeah… Those scientist-guys were always talking about the laws of physics.

But everybody knows laws are meant to be broken. Whose to say that, every so often, just maybe, possibly, perhaps, sometimes…something goes _wrong _every so often with the machinery of the universe? The idea of anything being perfect was wrong on its face. That was because _nothing _is one-hundred-percent purely perfect and flawless.

According to some of the books Heather read, just maybe those glitches in the machinery of the universe were permanent in places—like places on Earth. Cosmic mistakes happened in those places and _stayed _happening. The Bermuda Triangle was where things happened for example, all those ships and planes full of people just disappearing. This is a world where trillion-dollar satellites can zoom down onto any part of the earth and be so accurate as to see the copyright printed on the ass of somebody's name-brand jeans. How the _Hell _can _anything _get lost in a world like that?

Roswell, that was another place. People kept seeing things there—_flying _things. Some of those _flying _things were also said to be responsible for making live cows into dead cows without spilling a drop of blood. Sixty years later and the FBI still hadn't put a clincher on that phenomenon.

Oh, but those all _can't _be real. Only slack-jawed hillbilly yokels and crystal-worshipping weirdoes from Southern California believed in that crap—putting tin-foil hats on their pet dogs' heads and meditating upon mail-order channeling stones to contact their space-friends. Crazy things like space aliens and sea-serpents and ghosts and time-warps and all that stuff _just don't exist in real life_. They only exist for crazy people.

If anything deserved belief, it was _science. _Science, the laws of physics, the laws of reality, shall always keep the universe obeying perfectly logical lines—like gravity. Gravity will always keep the Earth from going skip-a-roo into the cosmic darkness of forever. Meanwhile, the sun will keep on shining for another few billion years (give or take a birthday), one plus one will always equal two, and only crazy people anything about the perfect workings of the universe ever having the occasional operational hiccup. The universe _never _makes mistakes.

Well maybe things were crazier than what scientist-types wanted to believe. Heather once read something about how scientists didn't believe that rocks fell from the sky…until they finally came to believe in what science today calls _asteroids _and _meteors_. Oh, and scientists didn't believe that land could be cursed. Curses are for superstition! Then scientists found out that land infested with _anthrax _will kill livestock over time, like a curse. Scientists later figured out that washing your hands before operating on somebody kept them from dying. So if it took one hundred years for modern science to figure out that rocks fell from the sky, two hundred years that land could become contaminated and a jaw-dropping _three _hundred years to figure out that washing your hands before performing surgery is a _good _thing, then what the fork could scientists _possibly _know about things like time warps, haunted houses and Silent Hill?

…

_Silent Hill_… Alright, stop that right now. Heather didn't want to think about that place. _That's one scre-e-ewed up town, _an old guy told her once_. _Heather could not help but agree. Talk of little gray space aliens and disappearing ships in misty oceans were one thing. _That _town was something else altogether. Things that happened in _that _town were _real. _Things happened and appeared there that ought not exist. The messages appearing in her diary were a lot like that. Heather hoped to not ever have to deal with messed-up stuff like that. Now look. _One screwed up town_…

"_Screwed up,_" muttered Heather. _Flick-flicker, _went the lights above. Heather looked up at the lights and started yelling. "No, don't you do that. Don't you _dare _do that!" _Blink-flickety…_

Too bad, so sad, the lights were _flick-flickering _anyway. Something was happening here. Something was happening, and all that begging and pleading from a certain nineteen-year-old girl with lots of bad luck in her life wasn't going to stop it.

"It's not fair! This can't be happening…" A thrusting headache forced her to go quiet, the pain…_penetrating her head. The girl just couldn't stay sitting upright anymore. _

_As the pain sank in and the lights flickered, the girl laid down sideways and put fingers to her forehead. Tears came to her eyes as small sounds of pain came from her throat. Everything hurt so much as the lights overhead went crazy, her sense of reality beginning to fade into a darkness that was darker than the universe …_

…

2.

…

_Did Heather turn on her little radio, the thing sitting atop her desk? Hell no. That little thing turned itself on, gosh darn-it! It didn't need some neurotic, skinny little girl with dyed blonde hair to turn it on and make some noise. _

_An old riddle asks something about a tree. Namely, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a sound? Damn yeah it does. Who the fork ever said that human ears had to be around to catch sounds? Likewise, whoever said that human ears had to be around to hear what was playing on the radio? Words are words and sounds are sounds regardless of human ears being around to catch them. The radio caught the radio waves and played a song: _

_In the pretend world _

…_we all are very awake_

_In the pretend world_

…_we all look sterile and fake_

_In this atmosphere_

…_we could chatter for days_

_In the pretend world_

…_we never admit our mistakes._

_But in the real world_

…_.we're hiding alone _

_and ashamed!_

_And we can't live while_

…_we're addicted to pain!_

…

_Heather opened her eyes and felt conscious..._enough to know her location. This was the hospital again. Her situation was just as it was before, at around the same time of day. Her lost-colored light eyes took in a view—lying on this bed and looking up. To her left was the barred hospital window, blood-colored sunlight of the dying day glowing into this room. The ceiling above and walls all around were shadowed in gloom and out of sight. Or maybe slow-acting malnutrition was affecting her eyesight. It was certainly affecting her otherwise sunny and sprightly disposition—if the girl actually had anything like a sunny and sprightly disposition before.

Right of her hospital bed here was one of the doctor-things—one of those creatures that pretended to be human. The damned thing was sitting there in the gloom. It was just _waiting _for her to wake up. Heather wasn't afraid of the creature. Being around them made her…_used _to them.

What made that creature's presence easier to bear was how it did a better-than-usual job of at least looking human. The face it had was relatively new-looking and melded very well to the front of its head. Though its slacks and buttoned-down shirt were simply beige, its white doctor's jacket was not just white, it was whiter than white. Gloves completed the illusion by covering the skin of the hands. A person could look at this creature and not know that there was radically diseased flesh beneath the surface—thoroughly nasty flesh infested with bacteria, contaminated with all kinds of radiation, messed up in all kinds of fun-filled ways.

But the creature's medical jacket—the garment that reminded Heather of lab-coats—the garment was just so glaringly white. Why, that freak must be using some kind of new color-safe laundry detergent those commercials can't shut up about. The alternative was that the thing used an immensely toxic chemical that did a good job of cleaning clothes if one ignored the risks of lung-damage from the fumes. But when one was a creature of diseased and radiation-seared flesh, lung cancer was the least of one's worries.

"_Eergh, ach…!_" sputtered the doctor-thing—clearing diseased spittle from its messed-up throat. "_There is no going away,_" it said, still being human enough to speak a human language. "_No one can help you. We are the end and the beginning. We always win._"

"Well _hello _to you, too…" began Heather. "Tell you what. Why don't you go off somewhere quiet and go screw yourself. Or why not get one of those nurses and have your way with 'em? It'll be one Hell of a time until your dong falls off from whatever crotch-rotting wacky diseases you all have. You already sound like you've got enough diseases to make ten years' worth of medical research, so maybe a few more won't make much of a problem."

"_Your confidence is wrong,_" continued the doctor-thing. It was still talking as if not understanding the bold statements made against it. "_Our way is how things shall be. This world is ours. The next one will be ours._"

"Were you even listening? How can you listen to anything, talking as much as you do," said Heather, turning her head to look sideways at the doctor-thing. "You must be so fresh that you can still talk normally..." Heather paused when seeing a little maggoty worm-thing slither across the doctor's left eyeball. "About that freshness thing, never mind. You're just as messed up as the rest."

Wet sounds of flexing meat sounds came from somewhere around the doctor-creature. Only after a good few seconds did the girl realize that the sounds were coming from the doctor-thing's back. It was one of _those _doctor-things—the kind with something alive attached to its back. The lump on the back was getting a bit restless.

If the thing controlling the doctor was impatient, it was directly reflected in the doctor's behavior. "_We are doing what is the best for all bodies. This end shall be the beginning. Trust in us. Chorkumbleff, sorkle-princheff…!_"

From there, the doctor thing's speech reverted into that choked-up freaky monster-language that made almost no sense. But it apparently made its own kind of sense to those creatures that spoke it. It was no use in trying to keep up a conversation now. That thing wasn't even trying to have a dialogue—more like a monologue.

Heather gently shook her head and stared up at the sunset-shadowed ceiling. Trying to talk to those things was sometimes like talking to a deranged six-year-old… No, that's not a good enough description. Make that, trying to talk to a six-year-old kid who took a hit from an LSD-laced crack-pipe after taking a hit on the head. A person can try to talk sense and make sense, yet a deranged, crack-dosed six-year-old would not understand a single word. That doctor was totally wigged out, and so was this whole damned place. In fact, maybe that imaginary six-year-old kid with the crack-pipe and concussion actually ran this place. "_Elkric, snordlesplop! Oblamah! Hobbledehoy!_" exclaimed the doctor-thing.

Heather was getting more than a little pissed. It was too bad the girl didn't have the strength or the means to just show how angry. Such a show of anger would have, no doubt, involved a something that had double barrels sawed off at the end and takes ten-gauge shells. The girl didn't have that at her disposal.

However, the girl still had her mouth. "Just shut up already! I don't trust any of you freaks," was her eventual outburst. "Do you hear me? Do you even _care?_ Well, anyway… You're too messed up to care about anything I say, huh? It's a wonder how you can get up and walk at all. Freaks, that's what you are." The girl put on a bitter look. "You in particular deserve a lead pipe to the head for being such a rude jerk."

"_Erg-ach! Elkrik-mismork, elkrik-mismork, elkrik-mismork!_" declared the doctor-thing. "_El-tet, mismork oblamah!_" Then it stood up. Its head also began to vibrate, becoming a blur. No way was it able to talk any kind of sense now.

_Ho-o-o boy, here we go again, _thought Heather. Well, there was no point in trying to get the doctor-thing to talk sense now. That unseen presence controlling the doctor-thing must have realized that Heather can't be convinced, and it made the doctor-thing start walking towards the door. This conversation was over—the doctor-thing's head vibrating into a blur.

A person ought to wonder sometimes how those creatures could walk in a straight line at all when their heads started going crazy like that. Then a person had to remember that those things only _looked _human. And they only looked human on a _good day_, in fact. Maybe they were once human. Or maybe they never were. Anyway, a typical earthling son trying to do that blur-shake head-vibration thing would quickly have his or her brain reduced to the consistency of tapioca pudding. Heather _hated _tapioca pudding, also hated the things that ran this place.

_Click-clackety… _Dry mechanical sounds of the metal door's workings sounded out as the thing was opened again before it was _slammed _shut. A matching sound of mechanical locking followed that. _Ha-ha, bitch! You're not going anywhere today!_

Heather shook her head. Didn't those creatures know it was _rude_ to slam doors? Their mothers must have raised them to be better than that. Even if their mothers were probably rot-skinned meat-machines from some alternate Hell-universe or future-time or whatever, they still ought to know better. That sort of behavior was worth a butt-whoppin' in some households.

Speaking of whoopin', the girl thought about getting back at the creatures that ran this place. _Just you wait. I'm getting the Hell outta here. And when I do, don't think you all are getting off the hook. You're all gonna be beaten to a bloody, rotten pulp when my plan is done with this place. _The girl thought about a comic shown to her by somebody at work where a gap-toothed pot-bellied big guy beat up a smaller and skinnier guy until the skinnier guy was a flattened tangle of human limbs with a squashed head looking sideways—drawn to suspiciously look like a human pancake. Yeah, that was what Heather wanted done to these freaks, have them beaten into flesh-pancakes, their heads smashed to the side, their broken limbs twitching.

Oh, but that wouldn't be good enough. Her eyes were staring up at the vague and shadowed gloom of the ceiling, but her mind was on something else altogether. Revenge was coming. Other aspects of herself were coming. Revenge was on its way as surely as sunlight darkens into blood-colored hues at the end of every day. _Mmm, yes_… The revenge will be oh so _sw-e-e-eet… _

Something happened to the lights. _Flickety-blink!_ Messed-up lights did that thing again. What else was new? Things happened when the girl was around. After all, the townspeople didn't want her locked up in here for just nothing—something being wrong with her. Right now that _something _was beginning to get as stirred up as her anger at this place became ever more heated. _Flick-flicker! _

Heather's thinking became images instead of words. Her anger went beyond articulate language. Her anger…_became a warm and heated thing all full of red-shaded gloom and swirling shadows. Glorious images of pummeled bodies and squeals of distorted pain filled her mind. The wrongness of this place would be beaten, squashed and destroyed. All the beings here would suffer. _

_Something else was happening. Across a vast distance, beyond a darkness darker than the universe, something took shape. It was far away and was forgetful for a time. Yet the loudness of the anger was enough to rouse it from afar. That anger from the girl allowed the entity to take shape beyond being merely a shadow of something. Heather's anger allowed it to take flesh. It took on a mind needed to exist. Now it was making its way from a place between the worlds… _


	4. Chapter 4

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

"Yellow Lights"

song and lyrics as heard on WPRB

Chapter 4

…

1.

…

_Somewhere else, that little plastic radio was sitting all comfortably atop a desk. What desk, in what place, where and how? It didn't matter much. The message is more important than the messenger. Right now, the radio had a message. The message came in the form of song sung by an artsy club-girl as backed by a synthesizer-altered set of guitars or something, along with a drum-kept beat..._

_You think that you've _solved_ me!_

_That I should complete me._

_Pretending to be sweetly…innocent._

_Instead of burning the _real _side_

…_inside of my mind._

_I make up a different…reality!_

_Meanwhile, people _collapsing

…_every second of stinging_

…_the sickness and breathing_

…_everywhere!_

_Of course, I want to hel-l-lp_

_But I just keep the same…vow!_

_I'm too small to even reach…_

_I know you'll think less of me!_

_I shut my eyes com-plete-ly…_

_Before the little radio could take too much more strain from the tune, static overcame the transmission. Well, doesn't that just beat all! It was just when the song was getting good! Yet static had its way in the end. It always does._

…

Some hours into mid-morning, Heather was already at work. Waking up, exercising and showering, brushing her head of feathery blonde hair, all of that was done without much thinking. The girl dressed in her currently typical outfit of tight blue jeans and top and was off to work.

So this was her at work in the mall bookstore--sitting perched atop a high stool and not doing much at the moment. Her witch-hazel eyes stared off at the place between the bookstore shelves, lost eyes in a lost-looking face. Everything needing to be done was done already, clocking in and neatening shelves of books and all that crap—including the shelves of romance (porn) novels. Heather _could _get up to check the back-room for extra stock labeled for shelving. Then again, anyone who asked her to do that right now could go fork themselves.

The boss-lady would probably have something to say about that attitude… Heather just didn't give a damn sometimes about what _her boss _thought. Her boss, other people, who cares? It was just really hard to care.

Most anything bad that could happen to a girl already did happen to Heather, so it would take something really big to make her take notice. Her Mom was dead and barely remembered, died before Heather was six. Her Dad was dead, killed in his sleep. Two parents dead meant no parents and making her with no family to speak of at the moment. No family meant no family problems, so that was that. Even the bills were barely a problem—always paid with maybe some cash left over to throw in the bank. (Heather actually had quite a bit socked away in that account of hers, though, just to be on the safe side.) No family, no bills, no problems... No hassles, no hurry; no troubles, no worry!

Oh wait. There _was _perhaps a probable, potential, possible problem. Make that two probable, potential, possible problems. And there could maybe be more if one counted her not having done housecleaning chores last night… Good job! Now there were dinner dishes in the sink and maybe a hassle's worth of dust on the apartment floor. That's the way things are in the city: all of those vehicles putting particulates and crap in the air and making people have to do sweeping and dusting and cleaning more often. If this was maybe fifty years ago, that would be a wife's work. Heather didn't have a wife. So the work fell to her.

Her apartment wasn't about to get up and go anywhere anytime soon. It would still be there waiting for her to do the sweeping and mopping and whatever. And those dishes were there too, just chillin' out in the kitchen sink. If inanimate objects like those could speak, they would probably say, _Wash us, bitch! _Oh joy, it was house-cleaning after eight hours of work, which made it work after work.

Why—for dog's sake—was Heather thinking about house chores? It was a damned sight better than thinking about a certain nightmare hospital in that other world, that was for sure. Heather didn't _want _to have to worry about it but found herself worrying anyway. It was like there was this whole other world, this other life, where everything was different and wrong…

Heather had been there, waking up there somehow, knowing how things were going. People in that other world were in trouble and just didn't want to admit it. Things were going down and going wrong. For one thing, _things _started appearing. The weather there was getting kind of funky, those odd fogs that rolled in and started making things happen every so often. And the sky was starting to change. Days were getting shorter, followed by long sunsets and even longer nights. This girl knew all about symptoms of reality like that and what went with it. Animals started showing up, animals that weren't _really _animals but something else. Some weirdoes started traipsing along the streets and making unwanted visits to public places—with rumors of those strangers maybe not even being human… "It's not my problem," said Heather aloud. "I've got nothing to do with it."

Embarrassment was swift and brought a slight blush to her cheeks. There was something to be said about people who talked when nobody else was around. Only _crazy _people do that sort of thing. Went a thought, _Oh great, now I'm talking to myself. Why not? I already play with myself. _

Be it self-conversation or self-pleasuring, everything was fine so long as no one knew about either of those things. So Heather just sat here and forced herself to think about _not _thinking about what was being thought about anyway. Did that make sense? Whatever. It made its own kind of sense. And when this bookstore's doors opened and closed with nobody in sight, that made its own kind of sense too.

_Flick-flicker, _went the lights. A cold breeze blew through blew through here even though there were no open windows. Heather got her jeans-covered butt off the stool and stood on sneaker-covered feet. Something was going on here… Something had entered this store. Her eyes couldn't see what that _something _was, but her mind could sense it. To Heather, it felt like when someone was watching.

Hard sounds of some serious boot heels came clicking in this direction from the right. It sounded like footsteps echoing along someplace hard. It made the girl think of calf-length tight black things with hard heels, clicking along a hallway, a woman's boots. Trouble was, this was not an echo-prone hallway. This was a bookstore with gentle wood-paneled walls behind wall-to-wall books. There weren't supposed to be echoes.

Striding in from the right, a pale-skinned, dark-haired girl came to a quick stop in front of the counter—dressed in all black, dark eyes staring. A pointing, black-fingernailed white hand at the end of a jacket-sleeved arm pointed at Heather. "_You _are a catalyst. Come with me!"

_Huh, what, how, why…! _Heather's eyes took in the sight of this amazing newcomer. And what a sight this female newcomer was. Flawless legs were clad in boots up to the calf, skin that was somehow more pale than milk as seen by moonlight. A black leather dress clung to an exquisitely slender body worthy of a supermodel, the skirt portion of the tight garment barely covering the tops of long thighs. Perhaps as some concession to modesty was an open leather jacket was worn over slim shoulders and arms, a _black _leather jacket of course. Framing her face and the shape of a long neck was long straight hair the color of midnight silk. Dark eyes looked as if they swallowed light. Dark eyes matched dark lipstick—or her lips were tattooed with tint to look that way permanently. Goth? Hell, that girl was a Goth Queen Supreme!

Heather never saw a girl who looked like _that _before, not in real life. This was saying a lot considering how some pretty radical types frequented the mall from the local public schools. To this, Heather responded thusly. "Oh…my…God… Since when did Elvira have a younger sister?" The sound of the _slap _was loud and sharp.

Only after Heather was on the floor and lying on her side did realization come as to what just happened. It was _Heather _who had been slapped. Understanding that was a minor challenge in itself because _anything_ at the moment because her head felt like two shots of whiskey consumed in the same second. Funny thing was, Goth Girl didn't even move to deliver the blow. Or maybe that dark-clad girl moved too fast to see.

"Offend me not with your wrong-headed blasphemies!" declared the Goth-looking girl. "You shall stand before me and give a more proper answer to my command. Now let us partake of this initial meeting once more."

From where Heather was lying on the floor, it was easy to see the place behind the counter where this store kept a pistol. Uh-huh… This may be the mall, pretty and all, but the bookstore still had to keep weapons around. The police weren't always exactly the most effective group in the world. And forget about those rent-a-cop mall security guards--them and their pot-bellies and their part-time attitudes, only hired because they had connections. Those guys maybe made five cents above minimum wage and didn't really give a flying fart about their jobs. Hence, there was the need for some shopkeepers to keep security closer at hand.

Heather sat herself up and leaned close to the small pistol's hiding place—placing both hands there as if resting, before wrapping her right hand around the weapon's handgrip. Right finger went into the trigger guard while right thumb quietly _snicked _off the safety. Oh yeah… This skinny shopkeeper-girl had a little customer service in stock and on the way.

A trickle of blood dribbled from a corner of her lower lip, both lips numb, Heather stood with the weapon. _Partake of this, bitch. _The weapon was aimed at this rude customer.

Now this was only the third time in her life that the petite blonde ever aimed a pistol at an actual, living human being…though Goth Girl here didn't look like the most alive kind of thing in the world right now. Deathly pale skin, that looked just this side of vampire or something. That all-black getup and black lipstick, midnight-colored hair, didn't help any. Whatever. If Gothy here didn't behave, there'd be a body piercing of a different kind—the nine millimeter kind.

It wasn't exactly part of on-the-job training, but Heather knew how to deal with rowdy customers. Saying, "Now it's my turn to be the boss. Why'd you hit me? You're gonna be a problem, and now I'm gonna deal with you. Yeah, and gimme a name so I can tell the cops it when they come for you."

"Hmm… In as far as a name is concerned, the closest equivalent in this tongue would be Janice," began the Goth-looking girl. Her slightly accented voice sharpened the syllables, made her words sound more delicate and elastic. "Yet I doubt if your throat and mouth are capable of forming the sounds necessary to affect my true name."

"Alright, now you're creeping me out," said Heather. "Now let's say you stand right there until the mall rat-patrol and the real cops all come in. They'll give you a nice matching pair of silver bracelets with a chain in the middle. Then they'll take you away to a place where the walls are soft and the jackets have really snug sleeves. How's _that _for what's coming out of my throat and mouth?"

"Oh, you believe them capable of containing me? That is highly doubtful," began this _Janice _person. Her dark eyes looked to the pistol. "Further doubtful is how your pistol would be of much use. It is such a _simple _thing." Dark lips in her pale face formed a slight arc of a smile. _Blink-flicker, _went the lights. Then the pistol made a sharp bursting sound.

It made the noise not because it fired—but because it was _destroyed. _Something had struck the pistol and smashed it in Heather's hands. As all the dozen or so little broken parts of the pistol clattered to the floor, Heather was too shocked to know what just happened here. _Something _smashed the pistol to pieces without crushing her hands in the process. Though her right hand felt numb and shaky, at least nothing felt broken…yet.

Then came the pain. Pain replaced numbness, making her hold her right hand to her midriff, cradling the injured fingers. Heather looked pained as a small sound of hurt came from her mouth. And her lips still stung from that slap delivered by something unseen. Something was happening here that Heather didn't like, not one bit. If that wasn't all, what happened next was even worse.

Before anything else could be said, Janice's left hand snaked out to the front of Heather's neck—clasping the slender ridged column of Heather's throat between forefingers and thumb. Heather quickly grabbed the slim but strong wrist of the grasping hand as more pain brought tears to her wincing eyes.

Said Janice, "It would be so terribly easy for me to rip your windpipe from your body. Then it would be impossible to speak rudely when one lacks the means, hmm?" Then Janice began to pull sideways, leading Heather out from behind the counter.

Heather gasped and gurgled, her breath whistling in her crimped airway and held onto the wrist, even while doing her best to take steps and follow along. Being pulled along with pinching fingers on any part of anyone's body was never a good thing. Janice's sharp fingernails made things worse still.

…

It was in this torturous way Heather was taken out of the bookstore and into the second-floor walkway of the mall. The mall security and police that Heather got annoyed at seeing but wanted to see now, they were not here. Nobody else was here. More immediately, the girl worried about ending up dead by being grabbed like this.

Somewhat luckily was how they rode the elevator down to the first floor soon enough instead of taking the stairs. Now _that _would have been a pain. Heather only hesitated slightly when Janice's fingernails began to dig in. Resisting wasn't a good idea. So Heather chose not to resist, not particularly wanting her throat ripped out and all. Heather and her throat somehow survived the trip to the west exit of the mall—where a limousine was waiting outside.

…

2.

…

Maybe Heather would have been able to admire the sleek beauty of the long black car…if her throat wasn't being nearly crushed at the moment by a psycho-goth, that is. Speaking of which, Janice released her grip on Heather just long enough to give a shove. _In you go. _Then Janice entered the vehicle herself—entering a passenger compartment that looked like a miniature hotel suite. A glance from Janice's dark eyes, and the limousine door seemed to _slam _itself shut.

In this vehicle was luxury. Two wide sofa-like soft-leather seats--seductively soft seats--were opposite each other, as viewed across a low oak-wood coffee table on a silk carpet. It also looked as if mere coffee was the last thing anyone would serve across that thing--more like something upon which one served wines with vintages and price-tags that would have made a connoisseur's eyes pop. Black velvet lined the doors. As for the windows, of course the windows just _had _to be tinted…dark. Dark clothes, dark hair, dark limousine, dark-tinted windows… There was definitely a theme going here.

Janice's amazing dark eyes regarded her acquired prize. This one that called herself _Heather Mason _was a mere slip of a girl. At the moment, this _Heather _was bent over and coughing fiercely, both hands to her throat. Now the long-car began to move with passenger and prize.

…

Janice waited for Heather's coughing to subside before speaking. "For someone of such immense power, one would believe you to be of greater physical viability than that."

Heather rasped out, "_I'll… I'll show you what's_physical, _bitch!_" Then this blonde girl tried to make a rush at the leather-clad figure sitting opposite—hands outstretched.

_Tried _was the operative term here. Heather fully intended to put her hands on that pretty, dark-clad goth-girl and wanted to make her unpretty if only a little bit. Though Heather was not exactly sure what damage could be done, it would at least involve some kinds of broken bones and lots of soft-tissue damage. It was too bad Heather was stopped just as her own ass left the seat.

As for _what _stopped her, that was not seen. _Thwack! _Heard was more like it.Something invisible struck Heather across the face. Some other unseen things grabbed her ankles and wrists. Unseen hands, chilly hands, they were _cold _and _wet_—and felt maybe a little scaly. The hands on her wrists roughly _yanked _her back towards her previous seat.

What was that, the second potential concussion today? Counting even to two was hard with one's head ringing. A now-stunned Heather looked at her wrists being held by hands that could not be seen. The girl used to wear soft wrist-bands to match the shirts worn to the mall but didn't always bother to do so. Now Heather wanted to have worn them, not wanting to be touched by whatever nasty things were holding her now. Invisible hands, cold and scaly, with just a hint of sliminess, _those hands weren't human._ "Get these things offa me!"

Janice's voice was dark and seductively sweet. "Ah. Now that you are a great deal more amenable to my proposal, we shall commence discussion of the matter at hand…so to speak. Is that not so?" There was a pause. "Silence implies consent."

Heather wasn't saying anything at the moment because those cold nasty hands were still cold nasty hands. Worse than that, in addition to being cold nasty hands, they were _invisible. _Hands are supposed to go with wrists, and wrists are supposed to be at the ends of arms. The hand-bone's connected to the…arm-bone. The arm-bone's connected to the…shoulder-bones! The shoulder bone's connected to the… Ah, never mind.

To make long of short, Heather just couldn't get over how there were _no forking people in sight. _Heather could feel the hands on her wrists. Also noticeable were butt-sized depressions in the seats—left and right—where people would have been sitting if they had holds on her. Then again, no way were those things _people. _

"Invisible hands for invisible people," said Heather, resisting the urge to cough. "Neat trick. So what're ya gonna do next? Pull a six-foot bunny-rabbit out of a two-foot hat?" _Thwack! _

The sound of this latest slap sounded even more effective within the confines of this limousine—like the sound of a rifle. Though the hand that delivered the chastising blow was invisible, the result was quite visible. Heather sat slumped sideways. Yup, that would be the _third _potential concussion today, but who's counting?

Janice waited a moment, perhaps as long as it took for Heather's ears to stop ringing. "Perhaps under other circumstances, your sarcasm would be considered quite amusing in a rather sophomoric way. These are not those other circumstances. Be it known that you must keep a civilized tongue in your head, at least in my presence. I am not one to be taken lightly." Janice tilted her head to the right, silky dark hair cascading sideways, as if looking sympathetically at Heather. "Or do you _enjoy _pain?"

Though the cut in her already-swollen lower lip was open afresh, her eyes glittering with seething anger, Heather knew when to call it quits. The girl was hot-tempered. Yet that didn't necessarily make her stupid. _Just you wait, Gothy, _thought Heather in sucking her hurt lower lip for a bit. But what the girl said aloud was, "Alright. I'm listening. Though I'd listen even better with these goons of yours letting my hands go. There's something _fishy _about them, and I don't like it."

For a moment, Janice raised her head and looked down at Heather before saying, "Very well." That unseen presence released Heather's wrists—the girl's now-freed hands going to wipe her lower lip before being held to the front of her bruised neck. Said Janice, "We have established the hierarchy in this partnership. Now let us resume discussion of the matter at hand lest your lack of discipline interrupt yet again.

"Let it be known that your actions have vastly compromised the well-being of my domain. By _you, _I do not mean _you _as an individual. There is more than one of _you_, as it has no doubt come to be known. _You _have come to disrupt the orderliness and coherence of that which must be. Had your life ended at the ascribed time, all would have been well and good. That has not come to pass. Your continued living existence has become a persistent irritation to the order and coherence which I have maintained throughout my existence."

Heather cleared her throat—tasting blood. Blood? Jeez! Who knows what kind of injuries there done? The girl didn't know much about anatomy but knew there were some important things inside of a person's neck, and there being some bleeding wasn't a good sign. Did that bitch have to be _so rough!_

Well, on with the show. "So I'm alive," said Heather. "Now you're telling me it's wrong for me to be alive, though. Big whoop. So why don't you just snuff me and be done with it, then? Wouldn't be the first time somebody wanted me done. It's not like I can stop you. And from the looks of this ride of yours, you must have loads of cash to pay people to do the dirty work for you. Why get those black-painted fingernails of yours dirty?"

"Such is indeed truth," began Janice. "Yet your death would leave you incapable of serving my purposes in a timely manner. Your latent abilities shall be used in setting right that which is going wrong, the ways of this world and others going wrong."

Thought Heather, _Oh great. It's more mystical mumbo-jumbo. Aren't there supposed to be laws against witchcraft? _Indeed, a few centuries back, people were burnt well-done at the stake for just _looking _like a witch. Anyone who looked like somebody who rode the broomstick express for midnight jam-sessions with the big-horned Prince of Darkness himself, that person just _had _to be a witch. That person just _had _to be made toast.

"My _latent abilities?_" asked Heather innocently, a deceptively sweet smile on her face. Never mind the recent slight swell of her lower lip. "Why, I do not know what you are talking about."

Janice's night-colored eyes widened for a moment. One of those invisible creatures grumbled. Yet no punishment was forthcoming. "Oh, dear sister, you _are _aware of that which you possess."

"You're calling me your sister?" asked Heather. "Gee, I'm not seeing much family resemblance here. I'm not exactly the tallest thing in the world, you know. And you look a tad bit pasty." Heather looked at her own hands—her skin-tone of someone, well…still alive. "That would be unless we're _adopted _and stuff."

Janice made a careless fluttering gesture with her right hand as if to brush aside Heather's denial. "Hide as you may, you are not truly of this world…or the world we shall approach. If you are to survive the journey and assist me, that realization must be affirmed with the return of your abilities."

_At least Gothy here isn't calling them powers, _thought Heather. Saying _abilities _was one thing. Calling what Heather had _powers _was just corny—the sort of _corny _that involved cape-swirling freaks in skin-tight clothes, performing the sorts of feats only seen in comic books and low-budget movies. _Faster than a speeding moron! Can leap fools in a single bound! _

However, Heather had seen some things earlier in her life... These were things that ought not happen in a world where everything was sane and normal. Heather hoped to put that sort of nonsense behind her—_wa-a-ay _behind her—and get on with a relatively acceptable and sane existence. So a little house surrounded by a white-picket fence to go with two-point-five kids and a dog were things not in her future. Let's just say that Heather wasn't the marrying type. At least there weren't any weirdoes…until now. In fact, there was one sitting opposite her right now. Make that two more if those unseen guys sitting left and right actually counted.

"I see the loss of resolve in your eyes," said Janice. "It is good that you relinquish this resistance to that which must be done. Such must be for the sake of all involved. For if we fail in this endeavor, it will not only mean the loss of my domain, it shall mean dire consequences for the very stability of reality itself. Darkness and madness shall come to reign forever, first in this world, then moving onto the next…"

_Yeah, okay, _thought Heather. _Like being bitch-slapped by invisible fish-people isn't weird enough. _"Sounds like some kind of evil cosmic dominoes. Anyway, where are we going to stop this from happening?"

Explained Janice, "Our ultimate destination in this endeavor is that of…another world. Be forewarned that this other place is already well-infested by that which seeks to bring about the darkness and madness. My chariot is not capable of breaching the way between worlds, for the fabric of reality remains firm in most places. There is, however, a place you know of in which the very stuff of reality has become porous and weak enough for us to pass through. _You _know the way through that place and into that other troubled reality, another world."

What place was Janice talking about? _One screwed-up town_. "Oh, Hell…" went Heather. "Noway_, _Goth-Girl! I've been down that road before, and I don't wanna go down it again."

"Do you really wish to refuse?" asked Janice calmly. "Consider the consequences, sister… Your journeys into that other world as caused by your other self will only increase in quantity. As you remain conscious, your presence in this reality seems solid. That will not be for long. Before long will be returns to that troubled world again…and again…and again… This is the only way."

Heather pouted. What Janice was saying could only be true. Nobody can run from the problems inside. The only way to solve those problems would be to get to where they were coming from. _Another world? We can't exactly catch the next Greyhound bus to the next alternate reality over, can we? _

Indeed, anyone asking for that kind of bus-ticket was likely to be taken away by the guys dressed in all white. They'll take that person to a big house with rooms that have soft walls and they give that person a snug-fitting jacket… Yes, and every so often, they would let the person out to talk freely of things that just aren't supposed to exist. _Heh-heh.,.. Cosmic clone in an alternate universe keeps writing in my diary. Heh-heh… Goth Girl has real magic. Heh-heh… Invisible fish-people keep slapping me! Heh-heh… There are other worlds than this one, doctor. Just you wait and see. Other worlds... Other wor-r-r-r-rlds! Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh…! _

Heather crossed slim bare arms over her midriff. _This is just great_. If irreversible damage wasn't already done—to her neck, at least—then more medical trouble would be through once this crazy goth-girl business was over. It wouldn't just be physical damage either. Some legal shenanigans would have to come out of this as well. Wasn't kidnapping a federal offense? Then would come questions about Heather's birth certificate not being up to snuff and _Heather _probably not being her real name. Screw it, Heather didn't really _have _a real name. Her name was as real as her birth certificate, and her birth certificate was phony, so put things together from there.

But there was no telling how long this latest bout of craziness was going to be. They were going to that screwed-up town as just a first stop—a _first _stop. And the truth was, like being lost to insanity, people who go to Silent Hill don't always come back.


	5. Chapter 5

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection (by Elliot Bowers) Chapter 5 …1…

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 5

…

1.

…

Orange-colored dying daylight glowed through the hospital-room window. Most everything in here was steeped and lost in shadows, everything except Heather upon the bed. No words filled her agitated mind. No thoughts of the future or the past or anything much either because pain was her world.

And if a person wanted an idea as to what kind of world that was at the moment, just looking at her would give an idea--that crimson blush that could only be trouble. Veins and arteries in her skin became dark as ink, looking like shadowed veins of a leaf. These blood vessels were jagged and forked lines along the streaks along the planes of her flesh. Then a particularly vicious streak of agony blazed along her spine, her body reacting, arching her back away from the bed.

After that, the pain…subsided to merely a full-body ache. Heather laid there on her back and stopped writhing. Her breath was coming in fast gasps because her body's physical reactions to the agony had exhausted her. The girl chose not to move out of fear that her pain would come right back at her. Like a crouching and unseen predatory thing, that pain was just waiting for the girl to fully relax her body before striking again--taking her while unaware and vulnerable.

Another painless moment passed. There instead was a full-body ache which was still bearable. Heather slowly swiveled her legs to the edge of the bed and set bare feet to the warm-tiled floor. So sitting on the edge of the bed, Heather gave pause on seeing her own limbs.

The entirety of her legs and feet were still with faded forms of that rippled red tone. And though the blood vessels in her skin were not as dark as they were before, they were still noticeable. Her arms and hands were the same. No doubt, beneath the thin white garment, her entire body was still with that same troubled discoloration.

_You jerk_, thought Heather, wrapping arms around herself and bending over as so elbows touched thighs. The girl bowed her head—short-cut dark hair curtaining her face. "You big jerk-hole. Just won't give up, will you?"

That sentiment was indeed said aloud to the hospital room. There was no one in sight. However, Heather knew full well that the all-pervading presence was nevertheless here—just as it was everywhere in the hospital. There was once a religion that spoke of there being a god's presence everywhere--an all-knowing entity that was also all-powerful. Something like that was in this hospital-prison place, but Heather thought it to be no loving entity deserving of worship. Heather had her fill of religion already and wanted to be done with the whole damned business if this was what religion meant, invading her body with contamination, trying to force pregnancy of an unnatural kind.

It was bad enough the deity was everywhere in this hospital. Now it was trying to be everywhere inside of her, too. A human rapist would ravage a person's body and leave it for dead. This rape-seeking presence was trying to take her over, trying to invade her body and mind as well. The looks of things made it seem as if the presence was close to winning. Its presence was already swarming just beneath her skin… At least a human rapist would leave a person after the deed was done.

"You think you're going to win," said Heather aloud, sitting up and talking over bare knees. "That's what you think, and that's what you want. But I won't let you. I have help coming! Do you hear me? They're going to stop you and make you go away. They'll… _Mmmph!_"

Heather's sound of pain squeezed all the breath in her lungs… A girl can't talk if there's no breath for doing the talking. Worse still was that damned pain and agony taking her over, all over again.

_That's what you want? You want me to lie down and take it, huh?_ Heather's face may have been obscured due to the blood tone, but there was no obscuring the building anger at this pain. _Don't you know when a girl says no, it's for real? I'm not gonna give up. And if you think I'm gonna surrender my body, the only part you're getting is my ass…so you can kiss it!_ The pain jumped up a nasty notch. _Ooh…!_

It ought not seem possible that the sickening internal torture could get any worse. However, the pain did go up…and up… A murderously sharp piercing sensation thrust up through her abdomen and made her flop off the bed in a violent and uncontrolled full-body spasm, as if the girl was hit with a jolt of electricity. The pain, it was intense enough to still make her twitch involuntarily as her entire nervous system was being overcome.

Her twitching stopped after a moment, though not because the pain was going away. It was more because the intensity was too much for her conscious mind to take--driving her into unconsciousness.

Lying on the hard-tiled floor and looking up at the industrial-styled ceiling through a haze of suffering, the girl began to hallucinate an amazing and dazzling display of sparkles that hazed over her vision. It is was what folks call _seeing stars_, when agony becomes so intense that it made a person see what Heather was seeing now. So many darkening sparkles of intense suffering as the girl was…_feeling darkness close over her_ …

Then it…went away again. Just like before, the source of the physical suffering withdrew and left her with just that dull ache all over. It wasn't just that. The unseen presence was also gone from this room. It was as if the presence was done toying with one of its playthings for a while.

Heather knew because that whole _somebody-is-here_ feeling wasn't there. No doubt the unseen presence or force or whatever was still throughout the rest of this hospital. That presence just withdrew from this particular room as it would for whatever reason. The girl couldn't be sure of why. Maybe that was because it did have control over her yet and still had to respect some distance.

Just to be sure, Heather raised her left arm to look at her own skin as seen in the orange-colored light of day. Her tone was rapidly returning to its currently pasty not-exposed-to-real-sunlight white instead of that blood-color-beneath-the-skin look. That presence wasn't trying to get inside her for the moment. Who knows? Maybe that presence wasn't bored but tired. After trying direct assaults, the influence over this hospital didn't even bother to send those phony doctor-things for a while—or even the nurses. That presence had to sometimes sort of take a break.

Good, no blood and no physical invasion, the girl let her left arm drop to the floor again…and decided to just rest. A person would otherwise complain about a cold hard floor. Not this time because the coolness felt good beneath her bare limbs and back, her head of dark hair pillowing the back of her scalp.

It had to take a break after going round to round with someone who could fight back. This brought a measure of confidence. _I've still got power enough to resist_ thought Heather. It has to get some distance because of respect for that power and having to deal with it.

A brief rattling sounded out before everything finally went totally quiet. That would be a power outage. A person from an industrialized country doesn't really notice how quiet a building can become until it is really quiet. That would be when powered machinery and what-not actually stopped humming in the background. Make that a full stop.

A better phrase came to mind--_stopped dead_. This hospital had stopped dead. Also coming to mind were thoughts of what else besides exhaustion could have maybe made that presence withdraw so much that it made the machines stop that much. It could be so tired that it was even turning off those machines… Or maybe, something really important really did happen.

Yes, something really important really did happen in her favor. Her out-loud claim that help was on the way was more true than realized. It had to come from a world away, yet it was help to be had. Heather really didn't like having to make her problems someone else's, but there wasn't any other choice.

The girl gave a weak smile before saying aloud, "You're in trouble now, mister." Maybe there was not enough of the presence to heed what was said, but it was said aloud in case it was. And that was just before things became loud and exciting.

This floor began to shimmy and rumble. _Blink-flicker_, went the florescent light way up in the ceiling. That light fixture way up in the ceiling flickered even with no actual electricity flowing through the wires. Now, anyone with a knowledge of what the teacher taught in science class--such as anybody who bothered to show up and pay attention--would know that various substances give off flashes of radiation light when exposed to certain kinds of ionizing radiation. And what the heck is _ionizing radiation?_ Let's just say that it's the nasty kind that people are better off getting the Hell away from if they appreciate being cancer-free and wish to have normal-looking children. Yeah buddy, some nasty ionizing radiation was flashing invisibly throughout this room as well as the entire hospital. Such was a side-effect of what was happening. Then the rumbling stopped, as did the _flick-flicker_ of the light.

Things changed. The light outside the window became redder as it was being shaded and filtered. That already sickly daylight wasn't just dimmer. It also was of a bloodier tint. Then Heather heard that long siren which brought to mind alerts for city-wide danger or something—that old siren the government people once said would be heard if a nuclear attack was imminent.

The presence used the siren for an altogether different purpose now. Maybe it just made the siren blare just to scare the sweat out of anyone still human enough to care. Heather still gave a darn and was feeling sick with fear as well as just feeling sick. Exposure to nasty kinds of radiation could do that to a person.

Still, the girl found strength enough in her body to begin crawling towards the window. It took a while. At no time was Heather able to get above hands and knees, but the voyage was done. Her hands went to the windowsill and held on as her eyes took in sight of what there was to see through the bars beyond the wire-reinforced window.

Oh, what a sight it was. Before those rumble-mania shenanigans, looking out the window gave a fair view of an abandoned downtown area in low sunset-colored daylight—the light of day always seeming to be sunset-colored as if the sun was going out. It was like that all day right until nightfall when night came slamming down to cast everything in darkness.

Now that outside daytime view was darker still and not because it was close to nightfall. It was still the afternoon, though it may as well be afternoon on some kind of sci-fi movie's planet where the sun is darker still. This was not another planet. This was Earth--a boring and normal planet so boring and normal that its name was another word for plain old dirt. Sunlight was a dull red tone as if it was having a hard time passing through the space around the hospital.

Then Heather knew what the presence had just done to this place. "Oh no," said the girl in a moderate voice at first. "No… _No!_" came her protest, starting to yell. "Don't _do this to me!_" Her body was weak, yet the girl still had energy enough to express her disappointment at all this. "You evil nasty thing…!"

Help may have arrived in this town. Yet first that help would have to find this hospital. That would be a pretty big task. And now the ever-so-slight sound of basement machinery started up again as if everything was the way it was before.

…

2.

…

_Heather woke up_…with almost everything shaking and shimmying. _Like, what the Hell!_ The girl first thought this was a surprise session of the earthquake boogie, when everything that's usually still is not being still. It was when the land itself was shuddering. Trouble was, this wasn't earthquake country. Earthquakes were for people who were suicidal enough to live in places like California or Hawaii some other whacked-out places like that. There were too many good reasons to not live in places like that, and quakes were just one of them.

Of course this wasn't an earthquake. Heather looked around the inside of this limousine and its sexy décor—including the sexy Janice, lounging her body back with elegant legs crossed while this pseudo-tectonic craziness was going on. If it wasn't an earthquake, then maybe it was a limo-quake.

The limo quaked again. Would that make it a limo-quake? No silly, there are no such things as limo-quakes. So what the fork was making everything shake? "What's going on!"

"We are…making a transition into your town," explained Janice through the kinetic and auditory madness. Heather somehow heard Janice despite the noise. "It is little worthy of concern. My chariot shall bear us to our destination to the best of its ability. At least I assume it to be capable of the latter. Its stability may not be capable of withstanding the local distortions, its very structural coherence being compromised."

"You mean this ritzy ride of yours is gonna fall apart like a cheap home-made go-cart?" asked Heather. Things became quiet for a few seconds. "Last time I was here, somebody gave me a ride in a corny old station wagon, and we were just fine. What gives!" _R-r-rumble_… It was quiet for a few seconds, after all.

There it went again. Janice made that fluttering gesture with her right hand—the one that Heather understood to be the equivalent of the word _whatever_. "What gives may be our very means of transportation. After all, you in the plural deserve the blame for this spot of peril. My domain has been damaged…by your doings." This limousine went _whump_ as a particularly nasty hump made everything jump. "Is that a satisfactory answer?"

"Heck no!" countered Heather as this vehicle kept doing its thing. Meanwhile, lengths and tips of her own fluffy blonde hair fluttering over her eyes and made it hard to see. There wasn't much to see through the windows anyway. Everything out there was steeped in that too-familiar fog. Fluttering wisps of white passed by. Or rather, this vehicle was passing by while the fog itself was sitting still. Then the quaking and shaking started full-up again.

At this point, it would also maybe have been a good idea to wear a seat-belt…if there were any seatbelts in here. Heather was used to getting around on busses for the past few years. And on busses, there were no seatbelts. Looking for those bodily restraints in a motor-vehicle was not a habit. Besides, they always made her feel a little uncomfortable in how the upper part of the contraption had to go across the inner parts of her boobs and press—not that Heather had much going on in the bosom anyway. Skinny girls tended to not be well-endowed in the mammaries, after all.

Uncomfortable or not, it would've been better than being jingled, jangled and jumbled about while the instability of the local reality was turning this vehicle into a life-sized shakey-globe. "Oomph!" went Heather as another one of those nasty humps nearly made her bump her head on the ceiling. Considering how the girl wasn't too close to the ceiling in the first place from her sitting position, that was quite a hump.

This limousine made a sharp left turn which gave no care to the people riding it. Janice sitting across the way was still able to look all cool and composed while poor Heather here ended up a jumbled heap near the right door. _I swear, I'm gonna get you for that one_, went a thought.

_Squee-thump_. A squeak of multiple tires, and this vehicle stopped. Heather took this as an opportunity to get herself off the dark velvety floor of this passenger compartment. A quick hand went up to brush hair out of her eyes. Somebody needs to trim some bangs.

"We have arrived," summarized the dark-clad Goth girl—uncrossing her legs and gesturing towards the right-side door. It opened with no visible assistance. Then Janice herself began climbing out.

Heather stayed there just long enough to hear a grumbling close to the back of her neck. "Whatever," was her response. Then this petite blonde in tight jeans and middie-top began to exit this vehicle. The door slammed shut behind her close enough for her to feel the wind and vibration.

…

It was good to be standing on a surface that wasn't trying to shake itself to pieces. Heather and Janice were now standing on the pavement of a parking lot, one belonging to a motel called Jack's Inn. Jack's Inn, by the way, was only in this town—a town where all the abandoned streets and short buildings were covered with that fog. It was a while, but now Heather was back in town.

Thought Heather, _What, no parade-day festivities?_ Of course there were no parades. A person can't have parades without people for them. No people, no apparent signs of inhabitance, what one did see in looking around was swirling fog that obscured streets sided with short blocky small-town buildings, abandoned vehicles left parked at the sides.

One thing about Silent Hill is how it pretty much looks like almost any town in America. It had its share of small store-front businesses that seemed to be everywhere. Streets of store-front businesses existed alongside residential areas of two-story houses and some apartment buildings. Add to that some gas stations and the drinking joints not too far from the police stations, the hospitals, the school buildings and what-not... This town could be any town really. On initial consideration, a person would think that there was nothing spectacular at all about the Town of Silent Hill—other than the fact that nobody lived here anymore.

Everyone who once did live here was gone, just up and disappeared. They left everything behind. And if anyone knew anything about the rumors about this place—rumors that surrounded it like its infamous fog—then anyone would stay the heck away. Silent Hill? For dog's sake, don't go there! A thin line separates bravery and insanity, and anyone who trips into that infamous town is someone who has crossed that line. Not only that, they've done an Irish jig and a triple backflip while doing that crossing without a care in the world about coming back--not coming back to the safe side of the line, not coming back from insanity, not coming back from that _screwed up town_.

Now there really wouldn't be any going back for a while...because Janice's ride was driving away. "Hey… Hey!" went Heather, shouting at the rear of the long night-colored vehicle. Now that Heather thought of it--a long, sleek dark-colored vehicle really suited a long-bodied girl who dressed herself in black. But never mind that right now. "Get back here!" Turning to Janice, "Make the limo come back! You're rich. Don't you have one of those fancy portable phones or something to call the driver and stuff?"

"They are known as cellular telephones, for one. And…no, I lack need for such a contrivance," said Janice. "It would be useless, not functioning in this vicinity. What need have I for something useless? Now, let us use something of yours. In which way shall we go?"

"Which way? Which way! How the Hell should I…" began Heather, stopping herself. Heather suddenly had an idea of which direction they had to go. This girl could actually sense a part of town where conditions were ripe for their needs. The structure of reality itself was questionably thin throughout the local area. But now Heather could actually feel one place where it was dangerously so. Try as the girl might, this town was as much a part of her as her being part of it.

"We go this way," went Heather, pointing with a long slim arm. The direction of her point was diagonally forward and right, away from this motel.

The trouble with such direct and literal navigation is lots of little troubles going with it. There were little things like, oh say…wrought-iron fences topped with spikes and chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. Some places that didn't have fences before suddenly had them now. Buildings were also in the way, such as great thick three-story buildings with locked and armored doors. The landscape itself also had some surprises as well, because the land was gone in places. A person can say that a place was falling apart and not be too serious about it.

But this town really was a case in point for that as some parts had actually fallen away, taken away by something unknown and probably unknowable to human minds--at least sane human minds. Whole chunks of real-estate were swallowed up and gone. Gaps existed in the foggy landscape of the town. Pot-holes are one thing, and block-eating bottomless pits are something else. At least having a car fall into a pothole doesn't mean it being lost forever.

So add bottomless pits to that list of little things in the way and what-not. Locked doors were everywhere. Crazy fences were almost everywhere else. And any place left over was gone.

All that trouble, and all Heather had to do was point off in one fog-ridden direction. Of course, in the time it would have taken to say all of that aloud, the girl had since lowered her right arm and begun walking with Janice--who accepted the information with a nod and slight smile with her dark-tinted lips.

On with the show. Heather usually didn't mind walking because legging it from place to place sometimes beat waiting for the busses. Yes, Heather usually didn't mind walking…_alone_. Walking with other people was usually a pain because people were usually taller than her, damn it. It meant Heather having to put some extra pep in her step to keep up. And that's what a girl gets for living in a country that so happened to have the average height of around six feet. What else could one expect when kids are fed hundreds of bowls of crazy cereals to go with milk that was chock-full of hormones? And when they get older, they eat meat that's just as beefed up with all kinds of substances. Kids going to junior high school were her nineteen-year-old size… Not even the thick-heeled boots Heather used to like wearing helped much. Heather had her share of breakfast cereals when a little kid even though the effects seemed not to have taken. Yes indeed, it's the land of the giants where everybody takes great big land-loping strides and looks down on short-little Heather.

…

And as soon as they made it a smoky block at a fast-walking pace, Heather was quickly reminded that this particular land was not really part of the U. S. of A anymore. The girl saw it and maybe also felt it. People can say a lot of freakish things about Americans--like maybe some things about what the heck is in the milk. Yet the thing that ran across the street in front of them was clearly not born of American soil, probably not born on any of the known seven continents or its thousands of countries for that matter.

Yeah, Heather had almost forgotten about the sorts of random creatures that made cameo appearances around here. Things existed in this town a person would not believe existed. And after seeing them, a person would not want those things to exist after that. These were the kinds of things that get photographed as being blurred images to be posted and laughed at in supermarket tabloid readers.

People can guffaw all they want when they so happen to be a safe distance away from this town and in full daylight. Yet the things around here were no chuckling matter when one saw them for oneself. This was not a joke, not even a bad one. This was a bad impression of something not normal.

The girl had a rushed impression of something fast. It meant turning her head and eyes fast enough to get a glimpse--yet a good glimpse nevertheless before it zipped into the fog again. Heather thought it was something about the size of a horse if a horse could have a shell. The big thing had a smooth hump-shelled back, using a mad blur of arms and legs in racing through the intersection and getting along the street ahead. _Swish_… There it goes! No, it was actually another one of the same. This second rapid-fire glimpse solidified the first impression. That big fast thing definitely had a beetle-like look to it. Then yet another one whisked by, swishing through fog.

Anyone trying to get across the street ran the risk of being smacked dead-on by whatever those shell-backed things were. A person could get hit by one of those shell-things and get smashed to a pulp, and those things would still keep going. This was traffic of an animal sort--though not of any kind of animal that Heather had seen before.

Yet they had to go in this direction. Darned literal land-navigation, they were bound to run into some kind of trouble, or the trouble would run into them. Going back and around was pointless because it still meant getting across this particular street. _Zwish_…_!_ Yet another one of those things sprinted on by as if to reaffirm the danger.

"Great time for your limo to bug out on us," said Heather. "Now what'll we do? Call a crossing guard to hold up one of those goofy red-hexagon stop-signs? I doubt that'd do much good 'cause those running things probably won't stop unless you make them stop." This was assuming that the things come from a place where they have _stop_ in their language, if they even use language.

"The matter would be easily resolved by yourself if you allowed yourself to do so," said Janice. "However, in that you restrain your own abilities, it falls to myself to complete the task." That said, Janice did her thing. Make that one of her things.

A sweeping gesture with her right arm, and one of the shell-things coming from the right smashed itself into something unseen. Janice gestured with her left arm. Now both jacket-sleeved limbs were out. It was not even a full second later that another one of the sprinting shell-things ended up like one before it--going smash as it went full-speed into another invisible obstruction.

The result was an awesome and awful sight. Awesome was the truly awesome sight and sound of those things going a hundred miles an hour, head-on into invisible barriers--yet barriers nevertheless. Awful was the gory aftermath. Those were living things (whatever they were) and were fatally injured accordingly.

Those big horse-sized shell-things laid on their sides, thick tube-like limbs still blurring before still. Thick dark nasty stuff was oozing out from the top-fronts of their shells where they crashed head-on. They weren't going anywhere for a while and probably not ever again. _In a big hurry to go nowhere fast, _thought Heather.

"Come along," said Janice, crossing the street with that regal confident stride of hers, nice-looking long marble-colored legs with calves in onyx-black boots, open dark coat and long dark hair swishing behind her. "We need not tarry in this place." Her tone of voice may as well have meant, _Come along, child_.

Heather wasn't a child. The irritating of being addressed in that tone of voice nevertheless prompted her to follow…even as her eyes looked on the fallen shell-things lying on the street--two so far. Staring at them brought out the details—how their hinged meat-tube limbs ended in ridged pads for grip, how the soft bodies beneath the shells had little bumps. Openings at the fronts had dark long-toothed grilles to maybe filter stuff out of the air as they zoomed along. Maybe two of those limbs of theirs doubled for arms when they were not dashing, but it was hard to tell now. That dark greenish fluid began to make slow-moving spreading puddles that went toward the side of the street--this side of the street where Heather and Janice once stood. Nasty, nasty stuff it was. Nastier still were some insides…which were now outside. (It doesn't matter where they are now. Insides are called insides because _supposed _to be inside. When they're _outside_, that's when something has gone very wrong--something like running front-first at a hundred miles an hour into an invisible barrier.) Heather noticed dark hemispherical-looking things which the odd animals had been at the fronts of their shells, which now lay loose and out, coated with that dark syrupy slime. Syrupy indeed… An uncomfortable thought came to Heather's mind, about some little kid pouring that stuff over waffles and feeding it to an even younger brother. _Hey mom! Mikey likes it!_

Heather turned away in disgust and maybe a little satisfaction. As soon as this petite girl's sneakered feet made it across the street and without having stepped in any nasty puddles, Janice did another one of those odd gestures. Those two invisible helpers went away. And as soon as they did, another one of those shelled sprinter-things zipped across--its blurring limbs scattering bits of shattered shell in pools of dark fluid. Those things must not even care about their own kind. If they didn't care about being in some other place or whatever, they probably didn't care about their own kind lying dead, either.

And just as those things didn't care, neither did Heather. Whatever. Nothing surprised her given how things were going in this dump. The French have a saying... "The more it changes, the more it stays the same," said Heather aloud as they passed an abandoned storefront that nevertheless still had its goods in the window--some kind of construction hardware.

"_Je suis d'accord_," said Janice, instantly knowing the origin of the statement. "_Plus ca change… N'est-ce pas?_" A moment passed in which the elegant dark-eyed beauty knew that Heather was not one who spoke _la langue de Voltaire. Tant pis._

They walked on a few more steps with just the sound of Janice's boots clicking out and the sound of the fog-deepened until Janice added something else. "It is at least this unchanged property of this land which we shall take advantage--unchanged yet always changing. Lead us to where the inherent instability is at its most vulnerable. Then and there shall we make our exit and entrance."


	6. Chapter 6

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection (by Elliot Bowers) Chapter 6 It's Sunday

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

"No One Will Ever Love You"

as heard on WPRB Radio

Chapter 6

…

1.

…

The odd pair walked along the fog-obscured sidewalk in silence--cute little Heather with her lightly tanned sunny complexion and head of blonde hair, walking alongside the tall and moonlight-pale elegance of Janice and her raven-dark tresses. Add to the fact that their styles of dress were a total contrast. Heather wore her mall-girl outfit of jeans and midriff-baring tank-top, Janice dressed in darkest-of-night seductress style with her black close-fitting dress and open leather jacket. That was putting it kindly. A person could likewise say that Heather was more like mall-trash rather than a mall girl--akin to _trailer trash_. Janice could also be mistaken for a rather high-priced slut, thought a slut nevertheless. It all depended on one's point of view.

They walked in verbal silence, not actual and total silence. The two were just not talking to each other right now. It wasn't totally silent because Janice's heels clicked loudly enough, hard sharp stalking sounds along the sidewalk. Then there was the sound of the breeze along the foggy way, a wind that made deep low sounds in blowing across gaps between buildings.

As creepy as that wind-sound was, this not-talking business was still quiet and good enough for Heather. _Keeping one's mouth shut actually makes sense in this town, _thought the petite cutie in jeans and middie-baring top. _After all, this town does have _silent _in its name_. _It sure beats the Hell out of trying to have a conversation with Miss Goth Queen Supreme here._

"Do you still wish to deny this place of once-human residence being a part of you?" asked the taller, dark-haired girl.

"Shut up," said Heather. _Oops. _Just maybe it wasn't a good idea to be quick with the disrespect. Being bitch-slapped yet again was something Heather didn't want at the moment. Her lips were still tender from the last time Janice's unseen servants did their thing. "Okay, fine," continued the petite girl. "Let's talk. Let's talk about me not wanting to be here any damned more. Who'd _want _to belong to this dump? This isn't exactly the hottest bit of real estate in the world, you know."

"_Oh-h-h?_" went Janice, her statement being more song than word. "I would tend to disagree on that point. Any uninhabited stretch of land is instantly seen as desirable. Greed motivates people to do much in this world. I would think that hordes of slavish masses would wish to swarm all over it, rushing to consume the land's resources and have masses of grubby children as they do whatever they wish." Janice's voice then turned down an octave, her accent slightly more pronounced. "They have the breeding sensibilities of pestilence rodents. They eat food and rut with each other to bear children by the roomful, breeding and swarming, filling cities with their kind. Would you wish to be part of that wastrel race? Would you not wish to affirm being something apart?"

"What do you mean? What's that make us then, some kind of inhuman deviants?" asked Heather. _Oops, _again. Saying _us _put Heather in the same category as Janice. And just maybe it put Heather in the same category as a few other people in that far-off past of hers, the bad old days of long ago. Bad days are better off forgotten, but they cannot stay forgotten if they keep coming back.

Heather tried living this life, talking and dressing and like everyone else in her particular demographic--typical American white girl in her late teens, workin' her dead-end job and livin' her life. Somebody once called her _trailer trash_, but that was beside the point. It was no problem for her to work her job, go shopping, read the occasional creepy book while listening to her favorite music, and do whatever with her time. Okay, so Heather accepted herself and was accepted by others passably enough. Also true was how the occasional lingering gaze and the occasional stray set of hands were _more _than glad to accept her from a physical standpoint. The girl was not just normal. Heather was also cute to boot.

Yet something was always different about her. Being different made her stand out and vulnerable to ridicule by some. A certain ditzy co-worker was more than willing to pick on Heather's height. Heather's slim petiteness, with an emphasis on _petite_, very much put her in the crosshairs of just too many short jokes at her place of employment. (_You're the last one to know when it rains…and the first one that'll drown in the flood that comes, huh?_) Yeah, and the boss-lady passably suggested hairstyle and fashion tips.

"We are not inhuman freaks, as you so put it. I disbelieve such derogatory connotation," stated Janice. "We are a great deal more complete than the hoards of breeding meat-puppets of this world, swarming about in their flimsy cities. Meat puppets, forever grubbing the dirt for their sustenance with pathetic contrivances that fall apart after mere years of usage. Their grimy men-folk and their grubby sloppy paw-hands erect some metal sticks and cover them with walls made out of processed gray dirt, thinking themselves the greatest and most civilized creatures on this salty mudball of a world. The pestilent race is a truly contemptible lot."

"Guess what? We so happen to resemble the before-mentioned meat-puppets," countered Heather. Hmm… Since when did Heather use phrases like _before-mentioned _in everyday conversation? It sounds as if Janice was getting to be a bad influence.

Said the bad influence, "Yet which resembled…which? It is convenient that our bodies have a great many external similarities to the meat-puppets which grub about. We can exist among them and do what we please. In that we can blend in amongst them, any moments of anger and confusion at our manipulations cannot turn against us. Our numbers are few. It is wisest to remain anonymous in rulership."

Thought Heather, _So you wanna take over the world, huh? Rulership and stuff? _It wouldn't be the first time someone tried that sort of thing, people that weren't exactly sane. It also made Heather think about all of those cornball made-for-TV movies where some damned weirdo always had one scheme or other was trying to go for world domination. Heather used to watch stuff like that back when her Dad was alive and before the TV broke. Her dead-writer Dad wasn't coming back, and the TV was still busted because Heather didn't feel like getting another one. Another _television_, that is. There was too much crap on TV nowadays anyway, too many repeats. Too bad fathers can't be purchased at the appliance store.

Speaking of repeats, this whole situation was a repeat--her being back in _this _town…again. It was bad enough being born here. Then some goofy cult business involving some crazy bare-footed tall-blonde witch-lady made Heather come back, thanks to the help of some pot-bellied old detective guy. Again and again, and again some more, what was the deal with her having to come back to this _screwed-up _town?

Maybe there is no going away from anything permanently. Maybe time is really a circle instead of a straight line. What happens in the past has results that swirl 'round to the future, and shadows of the future can be seen from hints of the present. Bits and parts of the past keep coming back, again and again, just like Heather having to come back a third time. Lo and behold, some crazy tall lady was once more the culprit. Except this time the culprit was actually helping--in her own dark and questionable ways.

Money could be the reason why Janice was so loony. Yeah, being rich can allow a person to be as weird and off-the-wall as permitted. _Nobody _criticizes somebody with money--and who in turn can _give _lots of that money. Therefore, the person with the cash can go ahead and develop a whole host of _eccentricities. _

"I don't want to be a monster," said Heather to Janice, still trying to win over her side of this disagreement. "Being different means being a monster. And those things don't even deserve to exist. Not here and not anywhere."

Janice stopped walking, boot heels no longer clicking along the hardness of the gray concrete sidewalk. "Monsters, you say? Is that _really _your opinion of the entities which reside within this land? It so happens to match their opinion of us. This is after all becoming their territory. We are the bizarre outsiders. They are free to do what they please with the landscape."

Heather stopped walking, turned to look at Janice. Janice was standing there with jacket-sleeved arms crossed across her midriff. The dark-haired girl was smiling--dark lips on a pale face, lips arching upward. Heather didn't like it when Janice smiled like that, not one bit. It wasn't that Heather had anything against black lipstick or lip-dye, or whatever it was. (It actually made Janice look kind of hot.) It was just the way how Janice's midnight-dark eyes gleamed in a really creepy way.

Speaking of creepy, something wicked was coming this way. Heather's mind was sensing it much as a radio will pick up hissing static. Something was up.

…

Something was _up _alright--something at least twelve feet up, _something _walking this way. And all twelve feet of the massive something's height was audible in the stomping footsteps that resonated through the fog. First the figure's shape was too big to be believed. The form became darker as it passed through enough fog to be visible.

Now Heather saw it and wished _not_ seeing it after all. The overalls-clad brute was at least tall enough to have its top reach the second-story window of a building. It was also just about that size across. The arms--oh, its _arms--_that thing had them thick as telephone poles, torso big as a truck and supported with stumpy thick legs that ended in bolted metal shoes. As to where a creature like that could find a pair of bib overalls in size quintuple-large was a question worth pondering. Also worth pondering was the massive creature's big mighty tool. (No, not _that _tool, pervert.) Its massive meat-and-metal hands gripped the length of a thick-barreled, massive tool that looked like a nuclear-powered jackhammer with force enough to topple a skyscraper at a single blow. A thick black cable went from the user-end of the mighty tool and looped around to the giant creature's back. It was this massive brute that stood squarely in the middle of the street, its steel-caged head billowing smoke.

Janice's previous statement echoed in Heather's mind--_free to do what they please with the landscape._ Janice, that bitch _knew _what was coming, making a reference to _these _things. "You knew we were walking towards something like _that_ and didn't tell me? What's _wrong _with you!"

"Dear sister, there is nothing lacking within myself," countered Janice. "It is what goes amiss with _you _that is of concern. Are you yet incapable of dealing with the threat that dares bar our path?"

"Anything _that_ big can do all the daring it wants," said Heather, once more looking to the giant. That brute was far away enough to be safe and seen--still too close yet. "We have to go in this direction, but nobody said we had to go _straight _in this direction. We can still back off and look for a way around." _And maybe look for a tank the National Guard left conveniently lying around while we're at it._

"I disagree," insisted Janice. "If you were not crippled by your own denial, the task at hand would be easily resolved with just a thought. It could very easily be made a smoking hulk…" Then Janice once more regarded the brute's caged head and its steady pall of smoke. "Well, the thing would be doing _more _smoking than what it does now."

"I wasn't gonna say it before, but now I am. You're crazier than a loony bin full of loons," said Heather, speaking more confidently to Janice here in seeing that the gigantic beast wasn't coming in this direction just yet. "And anyone even thinking they can take that thing on needs to be taken away."

Yup, the brute with the smoking caged head was just cooling out and standing there. It was just _waiting _for somebody short and female to try something stupid. In this case, both somebodies facing it were a great deal less tall than the brute itself, and both were female.

"This threat is but little," countered Janice. "How can such a pest be a threat? After all, you _are _capable, I insist."

"You know what?" went Heather, barely listening. "I'm still voting we walk away while the walking is still good. We try to take that thing head-on, and the most we would do is piss it off." _Click! _Heather snapped the fingers of her right hand. "Hey, yeah! _That's _the ticket! Let's get that thing so mad that its head explodes! Why not? It's head is already smoking…. Or maybe I'm exaggerating and being sarcastic!"

"Oh very well, then!" went Janice. "I shall deal with the pitiful hindrance if you continue to doubt yourself." Much to Heather's annoyance, Janice was using the impatient and flustered tone of voice used in acquiescing to thoroughly uncooperative children. Before Heather say something about being treated like a kid, Janice looked at the threat….

Now came the fun part. _Crunch! _First, the gigantic brute flinched yet still stood there--trying to understand what just happened. Maybe a look of confusion appeared on its gnarled and nasty caged-head, but that was obscured by the smoke. Something happened…right? Hmm… It was something of deadly significance and really _ought _to be understandable. But it just wasn't understandable just yet…

_Crunch! _In case the brute didn't get the point the first time, the same thing happened again. This time, the brute understood. _This time_, the thing gave a horrid nightmare _how-w-wl, _sounding like what one would hear in an abandoned factory at midnight--a sound somewhere between a diesel tractor and a beast from beyond. It stomp-turned around to wield its massive nuclear-powered jackhammer. Or rather the mighty brute turned to attack _whatever was biting big chunks out of its back. _

Now that the thing had its back to Heather and Janice, now Heather could see the two nicely sized gigantic gouge marks in the humanoid creature's back. Heather could also see a bit of the thing's insides. And since the bites were so darned big and deep, a person could poke one's head in any one of those to have a wet and nasty look around into the thing's insides. Dark oily meat-stuff was mixed in there with snapped wires and big broken rubbery tube-veins where it was…bitten. Heather imagined someone actually putting one's head inside and doing some looking, too. (_So _that's_ what's inside of one of those things? People say monsters don't exist. Hah! Here I am with my noggin clean and clear inside one of 'em! And from what I can see, the insides of this big nasty bitch look real as fork, I tell ya! Real…as…fork, suckas!) _

The huge brute-thing (which really was one big nasty bitch after all) raised its nuclear-powered jack-hammer thing to its hip-level and let loose with a close-range blast. A bright flash of light snapped through the air and was followed by a delayed shockwave of sound.

Heather was momentarily dazzled by the flash and blinked as her eyesight cleared, also feeling the backwash of heated air from that blast. The girl was also feeling a little bit sick. Light, heat, and feeling a little sick when exposed. The word _radiation _came to mind. Now that was just from standing in the vicinity of the brute's big jackhammer-thing when it was used. It would have been terrible to have been the one being actually and directly attacked … Heather was glad that it wasn't her picking a fight with the thing.

However, whatever the brute-thing was attacking, it seemed not to do much harm because…_crunch--_the same thing happened again, another bite. This bite so happened to be out of the brute-thing's right leg.

The brute-thing was in trouble. More of that dark ichor flowed from the brute-thing's body as yet another mighty insult had been inflicted upon its oily flesh. Now the brute-thing collapsed to its knees and gave another one of those midnight-factory _how-w-wls, _its smoking caged head vibrating with the sound. That _how-w-wl _slowly faded off as the mighty crunching began taking over. Big wet hulking chomping sounds resonated as the unseen presence--or presences--continued to devour the fleshy parts of the huge brute-thing. Then they began to eat their way into the thing's car-sized chest. And since the brute-thing's chest was just so big, there was a lot of eating to be done too. And that was going to be the end of _that _thing--devoured alive by the unseen servants of Janice.

"_Oh-h-h_, _yes…_ How _glorious _it is," declared Janice in regarding the scene. "None shall dare oppose our wrath. We are the true masters of this miserable world. Do you not yet agree?"

"I think I'm gonna be sick," said Heather. Everything about what was happening was getting to be unbearable. The sounds were bad enough. If anyone ever heard the sounds of something the size of an elephant being eaten alive…yes, it was that bad. Some nasty blue smoke was beginning to puff out of the brute-thing's body, a sunset-colored glow coming from within the creature's chest. It wasn't just the sound. That glow from the thing's body was now really getting to her.

One thing that people ought to know is that anything dealing with ionizing _radiation _was something to not be taken lightly--especially something dangerously radioactive enough to give off a visible glow. _Florescence _was what they call it. Between the toxic smoke and the poisonous radiation coming from the consumed brute, Heather's body and brain couldn't…_take it any more. Her eyes rolled up into her head as her limp form fell to the sidewalk--the back of her head thumping. That sunset-colored blur over came everything before darkness closed over…_

…

2.

…

_Because the stuff of reality was thinner in that fog-ridden town, the transition…_was maybe a tad bit more swift. It was also all the more faster in which Heather found herself waking up practically naked yet again, wearing nothing on her body but that thin white shirt. This was the _damned _bed again, in that _damned_ hospital, all of its _damned _doctors…!

Damn it. Heather's lost-colored hazel eyes took in sight of the hard-tiled ceiling. The circular light fixture way up in the ceiling was off and looked like a blackened gritty circle, but sunset-toned light made for illumination enough. _Sunset-colored light…? _No, it didn't feel like that time of day. Heather tentatively tried sitting up, feeling weak and shaky. This crash-diet was letting her keep off the weight like mad--though the waif didn't have too much excess to spare to begin with. If Heather got out of here, this would be a great place to recommend for those who wanted to lose weight and had no success anywhere else. All they had to do was keep from getting possessed and put up with meals of a…_foreign_ sort.

Get out of here? No, first the girl had to get up off the bed. And the minute the girl tried to stand, her legs gave out to make her sit sideways. _That was stupid, _thought Heather. Now her body was weak to a point beyond lethargy. Meaning, the food around here must have absolutely no nutritional value at all to human beings and was probably getting less nutritious by the minute. Or just maybe the nutritional value of the food would actually matter if Heather actually bothered to eat much of it. Then again true was how maybe Heather wasn't _really _quite human herself.

It was better off not going down that mental route again. Worth considering was the food. The locals weren't around to serve her the evening repast, so considerations of nutritional science could come later. Just how much later in the day was it? Look at this… They gave her a desk, some paper and bookshelves of books, all kinds of knick-knacks for reading and keeping her from getting to be totally nuts. However, they _didn't give her a clock or any other means of telling time. _

At least it was possible to tell what time of day it was, if not the hour. A closer look out the window would do that. Now the girl made her crawling way over to the barred window just to get some approximation of the time of day…

Kneeling on both knees, upper body better balanced with hands on the wire-reinforced windowpane, the girl saw it wasn't as late as once believed. This room was oh-so-conveniently located on the side of the building that faced the sunset. It almost always seemed to be sunset upon her waking up. The low orange-toned light was the color of near-sunset late afternoon. Except…it wasn't sunset.

Out there was a view of the abandoned downtown. It looked even more abandoned now--and even more dead. The dying sunlight barely shone on the downtown buildings and street. Cracks in the street were even more numerous, as were cracks in buildings. In fact, one of the buildings was already collapsed. Cars parked out there were looking beat since their paint was becoming splotched, some tires flat from some kind of decomposition. Light was so low out there that the shadows were deeper and darker. It was as if little patches of night were making an early showing. Yet there was something missing.

Look at that. It wasn't sunset, but the light was that same low golden tone. The girl hadn't even been here more than a few weeks at the most. Yet the scene outside was one that looked like years, or centuries, or even millennia happened to pass with the cars and buildings or something. And those streets, nothing human probably drove on them.

So about the streets looking that way, that was probably more due to the actions of the environment instead of excess traffic. Traffic, what traffic? Did the freaks running the show nowadays even _use _vehicles? Speaking of driving, all the chemicals used in car tires are supposed to make them almost impervious to decomposition. It means that tires can sit in landfills forever, hanging out right alongside those busted garbage-bags and baby-diapers and what-not like trash buddies. So for some of the car tires to go flat like that, for cracks to appear in an unused street, for a building to collapse in on itself in a place that supposedly didn't have earthquakes, all of this must have taken a very long time. Make that…maybe _centuries _long. As for the sun seeming to be dim enough to be going out like a flashlight with weak batteries, that wasn't supposed to happen--looking like the sunset time of day though the sun was shining from near the middle of the sky.

_Alright, now they're screwing with my sense of time, _thought Heather. That wasn't the only thing they were screwing around with--when they weren't trying to screw her chemically and personally. They were also having one Hell of a time in messing up the local landscape.

No, that wasn't it. Heather recalled all that shimmying and shaking from last time. They weren't just messing up the local land as in doing something recent and new. This hospital was actually now that was truly _far out. _This was a time and place in things had gone wrong a long time ago and _stayed _wrong. If Heather even managed to go out there, there would be more of _them _lurking everywhere. The streets, the towns, the countryside, _everywhere _was changed by _them. _If help was on the way, it could probably be too late and too far away--until and unless they found out how to get here.

That could be easy or hard depending on one's navigation. Just drive on up to the nearest gas-station and ask an attendant for driving directions to Dimension X or whatever. They'll then suggest the driver take a left at Something Street and drive through a funny-looking stretch of fog… That fog also looks like it rolled in from the Bermuda Triangle or Roswell. Oh, and could the driver wait a minute? With the driver patiently waiting with both hands on the steering wheel, the gas-station attendant would go off to make a call--calling those guys who got around in a white van and had snug-fitting jackets with sleeves that locked in the back…

Speaking of crazy, _this _was crazy. This hospital was crazy and so was the world it was in. No way was it supposed to exist in any sane order of things. Any other place, any other time, if anyone even began talking about freaky things like hospitals run by inhuman beings and alternate universes and crazy stuff of that flavor, if anyone started talking about this being _real, _they just _had _to be nuttier than health-crunch breakfast cereal. While thinking that, such was when…_the insane pain took her_. _Ha-ha! Gotcha! _

Heather dropped away from the window and fell onto her back, also hitting the back of her head against the floor. Now it was a double whammy--one whammy being the pain penetrating her midsection and another whammy from knocking her noggin. Those now-familiar dazzling sparkles of pain were at it again. Add to that how the food served hereabout wasn't exactly the height of culinary artistry, and the girl was in trouble in addition to already being in trouble.

As pain became her world, her vision darkened over with dazzling sparkles of pain all throughout her body and seeping into her mind. Heather was worried at first…until the pain began to sink into numbness. With that all-over numbness and darkness closing over, everything was getting dark. And as it did, the girl…_began to have a truly awesome vision that took her away…_

…

_This was a vision into realm was a darkened one of strange machines thrumming in the darkness, such strange dark machines. They existed in block-walled small rooms. Blood-colored light glowed down on black-metal engines that were built into here--installed here and also underneath this place. Engines sat dark and mechanical with pipes angling out from them, pipes that went out and down to the floor and up to the ceiling, some of those pipes wrapped with greasy electrical cables. Not that it was visible, but this room was full of the bad kind of radiation--ionizing radiation--as given off due to the machines doing what they did. It was that radiation which could cause cancer in a jiffy and kills humans even jiffier depending on one's level of exposure._

_The beauty of it was that there were none of those sissy humans here to worry about radiation anyway. Inhuman beings existed in this place and operated the strange machines. These strange machines that churned in rooms of blood-colored light could do the most amazing things. These strange machines can even influence other worlds. _

"_Elkric-n'somric!" squealed a creature in one of the red-lit machine rooms. The creature was about the same height and shape as a midget, wearing greasy coveralls. It reached out with three-fingered hands, those grubby mitts all covered with cancerous sores and knobby lumps. With those hands used in this room of blood-colored light, it turned a small wheel attached to one of those strange machines. Some kinds of new growls came from deep within the electromechanical workings of the strange machines in this room… "Elkric, cra-a--a-m, shlackle! Hobbledehoy!"_

…

_Please no, went Heather…_in waking up to the hospital room again, lying on the floor. They turned on the overhead light fixture--the light set high in the ceiling. Since the florescent light-fixture shone through a gritty glass-like circular plate, the light in this room was dimmer and mottled. Really, the guys running this place ought to give this place a good scrubbing every once in a while--like, oh say, at least once every ten thousand years or so. It couldn't hurt.

The girl sat up on the gritty floor, suddenly aware of feeling good enough to sit up despite feeling sick and wasted earlier. Now that was something curious. Her body was all thin and wasting away before. Whatever they didn't force-feed her, Heather gladly avoided eating. So, what gives?

Itchy little points on her body told her that. The white hospital garment was still as slut-short and tight as ever, barely covering her butt. It showed _all _of her legs, almost going to where her butt began when the girl was sitting down. Heather didn't have to pull the garment any to see to see the circular dark spots on her inner thighs where something had been inserted. Pulling on the garment any would reveal how the girl wasn't wearing anything underneath, so forget that.

Two more dark spots on her wrists--itchy dark spots--made for were where they also inserted something else. The word was _infused, _as in infusing something into her, putting it inside of her to mingle with her blood and becoming part of her. They did it to her while unconscious to. While Heather's body rested here, her mind asleep, they could do anything…they…wanted…

What did they do?A sudden upwelling of panic made Heather get to her feet. Hands to her lips, the girl did her best to bite down on an urge to _scream_. The screaming would start. So would the running and the frenzy. And friends, therein lays the beginning of a descent into babbling madness.

_Cool it, _thought Heather. _They're not going to beat me. I can't let them. Help is getting here. Some way, some how, help is coming for me. Help is getting closer. I can feel it. _Said the girl aloud,"Help is coming, and you can't stop them."

Something snarled from beyond the walls. _Whatever. _Feeling full of whatever questionable nutrition or fluids they put into her, Heather was feeling good enough to get over to that industrial-styled desk. There, the girl sat down and grabbed the notebook they gave her. Once seated, ignoring the itchy points on her inner thighs and wrists, it took her a moment to get into the right mindset used to do that certain kind of writing.

…

Same as before, it happened again. _Swish…clump! _A girl's ice-cold diary fell to a circular kitchen table a world away. The diary also opened itself to the latest entry as written by its unseen author from another place.

_You maybe won't get this for a while, and you're probably on the way. I'm still writing you, just to let you know I'm still here. We could also say it is writing to _me _since we're the same kind of person. Or maybe we're just the same person but in different places. I'm in this place. And you are still not here yet. _

_Not yet, but you will be here. You must get here. And you must get here soon. I can't hold out against them forever. They already have me trapped, but they don't have _me_. If they win, if they take my mind, then they will go after your mind next. After all, we're linked. So get here for both our sakes. _

…

_Sitting way atop a desk, that little plastic radio was doing its thing again. Static hissed out from its grille-slatted battery-powered speaker. Listening into the static, a person could hear little hints of distant sounds, perhaps audible snatches of things that could be something or nothing at all. Maybe there were some screams of soul-tearing suffering. Maybe an occasional laugh came in. And maybe that laughter was because of the soul-tearing suffering happening there, wherever the Hell the radio transmissions were coming from. Whatever kind of place had laughter from pain, a person was better off not going. _

_Something else faded in, a periodic thunk…thunk…thunk…of a drum as a slow-resonating guitar sounded out a back-melody… Sad and anxious lyrics pleaded out._

_If you don't mind, _

…_why don't you mind?_

_Where is your sense…_

…_.of indignation? _

_You are too kind,_

_Much too kind!_

_Where is the _madness

…_that you promised me?_

_Where is the dream _

…_which I paid_

…_de-e-early-y-y-y!_

_Of course the song itself wasn't done. Still, that was when the radio decided to shut up, having said what had to be said, thank-you-very-much. That static itself faded out as the gloom sank into faded darkness once more. The darkness swallowed the room and closed over everything. _


	7. Chapter 7

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection_

by Elliot Bowers

"Fallen"

lyrics and vocal by Jem

Chapter 7

…

1.

…

One big problem with their search through town was how Heather didn't exactly know what they were looking for. All that the petite blonde knew was that there was supposed to be _something _in this direction. That _something _would be recognizable when they came to it…whatever the fork _it _was. There was supposed to be some way through this town--a way out. _Far out, _was a hippie phrase that came to mind. Not that Heather was ever a surfer or hippie, but the phrase was most certainly fitting. They were getting the Hell out of this world and into another. About other worlds, Heather wasn't sure that things could get any more _far out _than that, dude…

And then they found the _something _they were looking for. It was more obvious than what one would initially believe. "Geez... No problem finding this thing, huh?" voiced Heather aloud, putting hands on jeans-clad hips. "This big building-machine thing wasn't here last time I was. I guess it's here now though."

Both girls now stood not too far from a black-metal structure that was the general shape and size of a building, yet wasn't a building. The building-sized thing, place or whatever it was--it had outer walls made of dark-plated metal instead of bricks. There were no windows, just more squares of metal. Near the top were rounded edges that arced up to the out-of-sight rooftop. Spikes thrust upward from that rooftop as seen from the ground. The thing was the size of a corner post-office, too. Cracks radiated outward from where its black-metal outer walls met the sidewalk as if the thing swelled into existence and shoved everything else aside. No doubt the thing had forced its presence into this world, shoving aside any other building that occupied this space before.

"I'm staring at it, but I still don't know what the fork it is," added Heather. "What's this supposed to be, anyway? Looks like some psycho's nightmare idea of a post office."

"It _is _a rather curious structure," agreed Janice. "It is also an accursed anomaly that has no place here. The very presence bespeaks discord in what must be an ordered world. I would very much like its complete destruction…after it has served our purpose. That which disrupts must be destroyed."

_Uh-oh. _That gave Heather pause. The petite young lady may talk like a temperamental airhead at times, but Daddy didn't exactly raise her to be a fool. Now Janice here was talking about destroying _disruption. _As in, a word that was synonymous with _messing up reality_ as understood by Janice.

Said Heather, "Wait a sec… All this time, you kept telling me that another _me _is responsible for messing stuff up. I'm to blame too, according to you." Heather didn't mean to rhyme that, but it happened anyway. "So you're gonna get rid of me too?"

"Do not be absurd," declared Janice. Once more was her using that tone of voice reserved for chiding children--though Janice didn't look too far out of her teens herself. "You have led the way to the means of transition and have already largely served most of your usefulness. I could very well destroy your body now and still be on the way to restoring order to my realm. Yet you remain somewhat useful. "

"Destroy me? Oh really?" asked Heather. Her right hand went a little lower on her right thigh--where her quite-tight jeans nevertheless had the barely detectible shape of her switchblade in a pocket. Heather remembered that a certain brutish creature--nuclear jackhammer and all--was no match for Janice, but it wouldn't hurt to try, would it? All the same true was how having the little weapon gave her a little thrill of kick-ass confidence.

"Yes, really," countered Janice. "You well-know that my abilities are not something to be trifled with. The same can be said of yourself should you choose to allow them free reign from within. That said, there is perhaps something of prime interest that requires your attention. An experienced bookseller such as yourself should know the worth of any book…including this one."

"What book?" asked Heather just as Janice turned to reach into the air. What happened then looked like an optical illusion. Heather saw Janice's left hand pull at something that wasn't there. Then something slowly was, pulled into view. Now Janice was holding a book with a cover of dark red leather. It was leather, but not cow or deer leather. Something about that book gave Heather the shivers. Yet the girl found herself holding her hands out to accept and hold the thing.

Never mind how holding it was starting to make her feel scared. _It's just a book, _thought Heather in looking down at the hard-cover thing. Goodness knows the girl had dealt with probably a few million books at work. It's just a book…that Janice pulled out of nowhere. _Guess it beats how people say they pull answers out of their butts_.

Why be scared of it? How was Heather scared of it? This was maybe a bit larger than the average hardcover and was maybe three hundred pages thick. Just holding and looking at a book gave her an estimate of how many pages long the thing was. Yup, that's what happens when one works at a bookstore. Not only did Heather handle books as a point of her job, the girl also read them--books being a heck of a lot cheaper than renting movies or paying a sixty-dollar cable bill every month.

Heather knew that a book was not just a book. One day, some young college dudes could read the right texts at school and suddenly get ideas on how to make weapons to blow up some cities. And maybe some day before, perhaps a day that was decades prior, some other young college dudes read some other stuff and figured out ways how to control countries enough to _use _those bombs. Thousands of years before that, some bearded guys in a desert put words down on paper and called it a _religion. _Ideas on pages bound between covers are ideas that can destroy worlds or create them. To say that a book was just a book was like saying the Earth was just some salty mudball that floated in space--populated with a few billion meat-puppet idiot-creatures that called themselves _humans_. So, again, is a book ever just a _book_? Goodness no, it isn't.

After staring slack-lipped and dumb-struck at the book, the first thing Heather did was what most people would do. That is, the girl opened it up to have a look-see.

Inside the first page was an orderly arrangement of words…except the words were not written in English or any other kind of language that the petite blonde girl had seen before. Hell, the whole darned thing wasn't written in Heather's native tongue, unless…

No, Heather actually knew the language, including the reading of it. That was _especially _true of it. See, this page with the orderly arrangement of words actually said "Table of Contents"--except a literal translation of the text would be "Contents, Book, Chart." It's the same, though.

And oh, what _contents _they were. Heather found it pretty darned difficult to believe what this book really was. Something like this wasn't supposed to exist outside of Harry Potter movies and alcohol-induced visions. Drink enough of something alcoholic and find out what's believable. A lot becomes believable, even _this _thing. If somebody said that holding a hippie-marked gem out in the middle of a monster-filled night would make a flying saucer come down and take one away, it would have just about as much believability as the existence of that which Heather held in her hands. (Never mind how Heather's dad once joked about doing that saucer-thing once.)

The book was real, but were its contents for real? At one point, Heather read one of the chapter headings and somehow understood what the words said. The girl then turned to a chapter about sixty pages into the text, tried reading it aloud…and found herself gagging. Her mind saw the words, but her vocal chords couldn't quite get the pronunciation.

"_Bleh…_ Jeez! Yeah, I know better than to try _that _again!" complained Heather to Janice--Janice standing here expectantly and not looking surprised. Again, Janice did not look surprised. or worried about Heather's reaction. Not being surprised could only mean that Jennifer knew… "You knew what'd happen if I tried reading this aloud, huh?" _Just as you knew what kind of gigantic shambling brute-thing was waiting for us in the fog._

Janice nodded. "I did, indeed. Your denial of what lies within acts as a psychological means of making yourself incapable. Medical science calls it hypochondria. It is akin to one's own misbelief rendering oneself paralyzed. In your case, it is a form of paralysis…which may be aided."

Before Heather could accept or decline Janice's offer for assistance of some kind, Janice helped anyway--first by moving behind Heather. The fingertips of Janice's left hand went to the place on Heather's midriff which was left exposed by a rather brief top, while the fingertips of her right went to the ridged length of Heather's throat. "What are you doing?" asked Heather, trying not to sound worried.

"Simply read," commanded Janice from behind Heather. The thing was, Janice's breath was chillier than what breath ought to be. One could even see puffs of cold. Something was wrong with that.

Heather nevertheless did what was told of her and began reading, beginning with the subtitle of the chapter. Then it was on to the main body of the work--which somehow thankfully had paragraphs. And after that, the girl found herself reading the entire three paragraphs. No way could her voice make the sounds they were making. And there was no way any human being with a normal physiology of the oral or tracheal sort could read that out loud and pronounce everything as correctly as it must be. Yet the girl did so anyway--though Janice stopped touching at some point.

At the end of that first three paragraphs, Heather started feeling dizzy as a kind of swirl-ridden keening filled her head. The girl had consumed alcoholic beverages before. And when one of her dad's weird writer-friends came over to smoke something that wasn't tobacco, the girl…_experienced _that before, too. Yet those sensations weren't close to this.

But this was not to say that it didn't feel good. It started to feel _wa-a-ay _good, good enough for her to want to be touched a certain way if not starting to touch herself. Now _that _was embarrassing. "Oh my gosh… _What is this?_" asked Heather, feeling hot and a little breathless. "Some kinda cosmic porn?"

"That is a rather carnal way of describing it," said Janice in walking back around to Heather's front. Janice took the book from Heather's unresisting hands and closed it. And then Janice moved to put the tome back onto a shelf--except there were no shelves around here. There was just this damned foggy sidewalk along a foggy street as far as anyone else could see. The book nevertheless had to have gone _somewhere_. In this case, it will have gone back to its nowhere place.

And as soon as Janice did that, something else was making its presence known. Make that another set of _somethings_. Heather first sensed them coming--that whole _somebody-is-watching-me _feeling, just _knew _that those things were coming this way. They were taking their sweet old time at first in coming this way too, leaving plenty of time for someone's imagination to play the worst of tricks.

…

2.

…

_Okay, _thought Heather. _What could it possibly be this time? Let's see… This trip, I've already seen sprinting shell-backed things with tentacles for legs, a giant cyborg-monster construction creature, and some invisible monster-things with big mouths… Well I can't say I really _saw _the invisible creatures 'cause they're invisible and all, just seeing what they do. Still… Okay, fog. What else have you got for me?_

"_Erg-ach!_" came a high-pitched squeal of a voice as if in response to Heather's thoughts.

"_Uyo n'esm'sirk, ed'n!_" Bare feet scampered from right to left. Another shout came from behind and was just about as understandable the first. "_Elkrik, o'me'sirk, igana-igana!_"

Just as how Heather understood the words in that book, the girl also understood what the squealing voice was saying. Those scampering, squealing jerks in the fog were condemning Heather and Janice and anything associated with them. Some of those words could considered be the alternate-reality equivalent of saying, _Fork you, bitch! Fork you and the horse you rode in on! _As for the rest of what else they were saying, that pissed Heather off even more.

What was nice about this situation was how Heather could do something in response. It was just so easy for her to do something now, to let the inner darkness do what was necessary. The passage from that book Janice let her read was a great reminder of that. A not-so-nice smile came to Heather's lips, her eyes hazel taking on a dark gleam.

Some properties of the air itself began to change. A person could not see or hear these properties any more than one can actually see static electricity on the surfaces of objects. Static electricity was in the air. Anyone who gets struck by lightning and survives well enough to tell about it knows the creeping feeling on one's skin as electrical potentials build up in the air.

"_Oblamah!_" squealed one of the things in the fog and tried to make a run for it along the foggy street. This run brought it _smack _into a wall of a nearby store front--one of those stores selling fine kitchenware and other homely kick-knacks. It laid there stunned on the sidewalk.

Now that the thing was lying down and not scampering around, a person could see it. This is not saying a person actually _wanted _to see it, ugly little asshole that it was. The thing looked like a three-hundred-year-old midget with grimy hair. It was wearing dark-stained bib overalls on its nasty little humanoid body. Three hundred years old had to be the right age, given how its corpse-gray face was as shriveled and as shrunken as that much aging would do.

Yet age would not explain how the midget-thing got a big mouth full of triangle-shaped teeth or only had three fingers on each hand, or two toes per foot. Maybe it originally had the normal five fingers and went too far in biting its own fingernails? And while at it, the thing decided to have some toe-snacks for good measure? At least the bib overalls outfit was understandable--probably worn because that nasty little bastard was on the same team as that brute with the nuclear-powered jackhammer.

Another one of those little bastards came scampering out of the fog…and then two more. Now it was an extra _pair _of bastards. What, there was more than one? There had to be. Somewhere, in some other bizarro alternate universe, there had to be entire countries full of 'em, if not the whole darned world itself. But when Heather was done with the ones here, there would at least be a few less. Heather used her ability …

An incredibly bright _flash_, followed by a shockwave-blast of sound, and one of the jerks tumble-bumbled to the long asphalt of the dark-gray street, dead before it fell. Now the little bastard was a _cooked _little bastard--a charred and blackened corpse in the shape of an other-worldly midget. _Crispy toasted dead _was a phrase that came to mind.

The other little guy maybe made it a little farther. Another surprisingly bright, and the end results were more of the same. Yes indeed, yet another carnivorous dwarf was made crispified faster than a person can say the first syllable of _bacon_.

Any more of the short-little bastards that wanted to cause trouble were now deciding to _not _make trouble. A person could hear their bare two-toed feet beating out a rapid pace out of here. As in, _Let's get the heck away from here. _Then they were gone before they were made goners.

Heather stood there for a moment, giving a blink of her eyes. _I did that? _The girl raised hands to her eyes, seeing the bright after-image of the flash, also feeling a hot dryness on her skin. Her skin... The girl thoughtthat something was wrong with it—maybe some little spots beneath the surface of her own flesh. They were gone before Heather could give them a good stare, though. Maybe it was her stunned mind making her see things?

In fact, Heather was feeling so zoned that it took some moments to realize Janice was walking circles around her. "How does it feel to finally release an aspect of your true self?" went the tall goth beauty when coming around front. "That which was once lost is not so lost, hmm?" was Janice's question from Heather's left side. Behind her, "It was hidden for all of this time…" Moving around to the right, "And now one can truly _feel _it." Coming around front, "Accept that which you are."

"The Hell I will," said Heather. "Soon as this is over, I'm goin' back to my apartment and gonna have a nice hot shower. Then I'm gonna have a nice tall glass of hot cocoa and a heaping helping of pancakes…before going to the bathroom and puking it up all up bulemia-style. And when I do, I hope memories of you go with it…" And Janice was still walking in circles around Heather. "Hey, quit it. You're making me feel dizzy and stuff."

That wasn't exactly right. It wasn't Janice's slow circumambulations that made Heather still feel a bit off-balance. It actually was the questions being asked. Part of it was also the aftermath of what had been done. Heather didn't _really _want to forget this newly returned feeling…of _power. _Heather had _power. _Now it wouldn't be so easy for her to be intimidated by Janice. _Let's see you try some invisible-monster stuff with me again. _Said Heather again, "I told you to quit it."

"Hatred is an emotion that strengthens you. You wish to kill me, do you not?" asked Janice. Heather said nothing, so Janice added, "You wish to be rid of me, just as a mortal meat-puppet will strike a child to silence its squealing…"

"Yeah, so what! Shut up already!" said Heather as _that _feeling began to build within her. It felt so strange before. Now it was suddenly as familiar as anything--like a good buddy not seen for a while. "Why can't you just…!" _Why can't you just stop trying to make me angry on purpose? _Heather took in a breath, trying _so hard _to not be one pissed-off chick. "You're trying to make me mad. It won't work."

"Oh fuddle! It _won't work, _you claim?" countered Janice, her bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout. Her tone of voice was so unbelievably sad that it just had to be phony. "And to think we were making _progress_." The phony pout went away. "Well, it was more facile and somewhat necessary while we were here. Let us be gone, then." Janice began to approach the machine-building.

_Uh…yeah, _thought Heather. _We're gonna walk into that nasty machine-building thing. Hopefully the thing's not so full of gears and wires and stuff that we end up being killed before we can get too far into there. _

Janice found something that was more shaped like a long black-metal lid instead of a door. Her pale, elegant hands found a circular red valve. But that door just wasn't there before. Something like that would have been noticeable.

Oh really? So where was it before, then? Doors just don't appear change at random, like certain machine-buildings do, like _this _machine-building. There was nothing left to do around here. So in they went.

And only when Heather went into the opened door and just past the threshold did this suddenly seem like the opposite of a good idea. It was…_bitingly cold, almost totally dark too. Air, there was no air. Heather wasn't even able to scream, the air sucked from her lungs and through her throat, no air to carry sound. A sunset-colored blur flared past her, and Heather began to lose consciousness…wondering if this was how somebody died in a situation like this_._ At least dying didn't hurt this way._

…

Out here on the foggy street, everything was just as jolly-good as it was before. The rectangular door closed behind them with a satisfied _thump--_as if the machine building had just consumed a good meal of two gullible girls. Suckers… That circular valve on the door began to un-turn itself in spinning closed. Then, with a sound of creaking metal, the industrial-styled door on the side of the machine-building was gone as if it wasn't there in the first place.

…

_That little radio was doing its thing again, sitting atop that desk in a place that barely had a glow of illumination to see by. Dark, it was so close to dark…. As to which desk it was, one could not be sure. It could be the raised desk in Heather's room proper. Or, it was the industrial desk at the accursed hospital. Maybe the radio was actually between those places, being in two places at once--appearing to be a slightly faded presence to anyone with a solid existence in either world. _

_Right now, the thing wasn't making for much in the way of listening pleasure--hissing with static and snatches of lost sound that were barely picked up from other places. A radio won't tell a person where those waves come from, just what the waves are saying by transforming waves of electromagnetic radiation into sound waves. _

_Whatever the case, that little radio was making some noise. Now it was beginning to pick up a song… Yes, a gentle-strumming guitar strummed notes up and down, then up…and down again. A sad but anxious voice female voice sang with the rhythm … _

_Said there'd be no coming back!_

_Promised myself I'd never be that sad!_

_Maybe that's why you've come alone._

…_I can feel it, baby. _

_I feel like I've fallen for you_

…_but I'm scared to_

…_let go._

_The radio played on a bit more before the signal was lost to chaos. Chaos, like how other sounds filtered in--sounds that weren't too nice to hear. Someone howled in pain, dimly in the background. The full intensity of it lost to the hush of the static. After that was maybe a sound that was like a deep dead chuckle. _


	8. Chapter 8

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

"Paralyzed"

lyrics by The Cardigans

vocal by Nina Persson

Chapter 8

…

1.

…

_Her eyes opened…. What Heather saw was a circle of bright redness, a dirty, red-toned light-fixture. It was a high-up light fixture that was actually built into the hard-tiled ceiling and sealed off with a circular lens--looking like a bright glaring eye that lit up everything. The girl tried sitting up, found it impossible to move. Unfeeling and paralyzed, the girl may as well be trapped in her own body._

_Something shadowed and vague stood over her. If a shadow could be made to stand up and look three-dimensional, that was what the form looked like. Shadow-people? Did they even exist? As the girl thought this, the light fixture on high started moving as a squeaking sound started up… _

_That wasn't quite right. It was Heather who was being moved. And the surface the girl was lying upon was actually something on thick wheels, making rattling and rumbling sounds while rolling across a gritty surface. It was a hospital gurney or something._

_A door to the left opened up. This rolling thing moved partway through. Then Heather saw everything tumbling, _herself _tumbling, dumped to the floor. _

_It ended with a view of another red-toned view of a ceiling. The sound of gurney wheels were going away again, and the door being slammed shut. Meanwhile, poor Heather here was just left on the floor like some kid's left-around toy--a girl-shaped toy in jeans and midriff-baring tank-top. _

_At last the red…_faded from her eyes. The paralysis and numbness faded from her body. That swinging light-fixture overhead didn't look like a dirty red-lit thing. Now it just looked plain dirty. Heather blinked her eyes and kept looking, even if there wasn't much to see besides just the factory-styled light fixture, hanging down from an interlocking set of pipes and wires that made for the ceiling in this place--this darkened place. Damn, that dirty light fixture barely gave enough to see by, this place being just so damned dark. And the fact that the walls were dark didn't help. Sitting up gave her a view of a blocky wall and a chance to get a closer look. It was a wall made of…metal bricks?

Now Heather was thinking, _Who the Hell makes walls out of metal bricks? Isn't metal really expensive and stuff? The guys who made this place must have money to burn. _Then again, whoever said that the people here actually used money? And this was assuming that they were _people_, for that matter--as in, people in the _human _sense of the word. Suddenly, Heather was standing up and couldn't stop herself from saying, "No, not again… Oh no. Not a place like this…"

"Oh, do calm yourself," said the calm goth-girl of a figure, her leather dress short as ever, sleeved arms of an open jacket crossed beneath the dual shape of breasts. Of course Janice was here, having waited…waited…and waited some more…for Heather to get around to regaining consciousness. Behind Janice was a massive machine that thrummed away and continued doing whatever it was doing--the noise low and rumbling like an engine. It rumbled low enough to not disrupt conversation. "You behave as if this sort of thing has never happened to you before."

"Well, I… It's kinda been a while," responded Heather. "I thought we went through that metal door or something and weren't coming back alive. It was like I couldn't breathe, and everything was just so cold. I felt…" _It felt like I was dead, _was what Heather thought, not wanting to say the worst out loud. Thoughts of one body having gone cold and numb, one's eyes blurred over as the corneas clouded over, one's breath's stopped. _Stop it. _"Where are we, anyway?"

"You know better than to ask that," sternly chided Janice. "More to the point at hand, is how we must find the correct way once more. Do not look to me for guidance or emotional support, for we are now beyond my realm of influence."

Heather crossed her own arms, her pose mirroring that of Janice. "You make me sound like I'm gonna burst into tears and go cryin' for mommy. My mom's been dead since I was little. Dad's dead too, dead for a while. So I haven't had to go crying to anyone for a good long while, okay? It gets really annoying, too, how you people with normal height keep treating me like I'm somebody's wailing brat or something. It's like you stop just short of patting me on the head and calling me 'sweetie.' Just because I'm not exactly the tallest and biggest person in the world doesn't mean that I'm any less mature. "

Janice uncrossed her arms and tilted her head to a side, a few loose dark lengths of hair fluttering across her face. "Hmm… Some maturity has indeed come to bloom within you, yet only because you chose to let it be so." Head upright again, Janice added, "Such will indeed be of immense use."

The statement of that calmed Heather down. Oh yeah, now Heather remembered _that_--being able to do things with her mind. Her new-found abilities could come in quite handy...

Now if there was any light of hope in getting the Hell out of this crazy place and back to a normal life, they had to find the way through. Heather thought about whose actions led her here in the first place. That other lost and troubled girl was calling out for help by sending messages. That other girl was somewhere beyond and through this place.

"This direction," said Heather, beginning to walk towards--then around--the big engine-machine that sat thrumming in this red-lit room. No magic floating arrow told her so, and no whispering voice said it explicitly. This just _felt _like the right way to go, like the feeling leading her through town.

And as soon as Heather walked around the machine, that sense of the way to go became a little bit stronger--as if that machine could interfere with one's mental sense of direction. That worried her at least a little bit, how an unknown engine-machine that could mess with somebody's thinking a little bit just by operating. Heather had the idea that it wasn't the only thing that strange machines of this place could do. Messing with people's thoughts was more like a side-effect of the strange machine's true purpose.

But that wasn't her main worry right now. Lots of things in this place could do things that a million scientists would probably kill their own grandmothers to find out about. Who knows, maybe a few of them fell into this place after having paid the admission price of one dead grandma. Hmmph… And maybe there were some worlds where the killing of grandparents was a holiday or something. It could happen. Why not? Some other worlds had it as so roasted dog was the main course. They just skinned ol' Fido, scooped out his guts and put him in an oven pre-heated to six-hundred degrees…. Don't even bother chopping off his head.

What a world. What _worlds._ Heather and Janice both knew there were other worlds, some of them being alternate realities where the people did things that would shock and amaze. Some of them were places seemed just too weird and nasty. And some of them were… Well, one was better off saying that some of those worlds weren't populated by beings what Heather would call people.

Roasted dogs and murdered grandparents aside, Heather knew that walking out of this machine-room would bring her to another long hallway. This place was just too familiar.

It was another hall. Janice followed Heather out and closed the door behind. The girl looked left and right to see the darkened corridor leading in both directions, with a gritty hard-tiled floor and with metal walls. Industrial-styled florescent light fixtures were hanging overhead, more of them attached to the metal-brick walls. The problem was that those fixtures attached to the walls just had wires hanging off into thin air and not attached to anything. It was odd how a light fixture could light up without any apparent source of flowing electricity.

Heather and Janice began walking past those light fixtures and some more metal doors. A person could be glad that the metal doors were closed too. Most of those doors just had the perfectly normal sound of thrumming machinery coming from behind them, but some of those doors muffled the sounds of things that a person was better off not seeing.

Never mind how passing close to some of those doors gave her slight headaches or made for odd thoughts, too. One doozy of a thought Heather had was about a burning bus driving along a street, ambling along a street on melted tires, driven by a large-headed midget with a body like an oversized lobster gone wrong. Another was a mental glimpse of a headless deer-creature with six horns ringing its body. Neither of those things were what Heather hoped to see in real life.

Some of those doors to the left and right had sounds that didn't seem right, either. One of those tall metal rectangles at the left had someone or something pounding on the other side and doing its damnedest to get out. Heather had the notion it was best to leave it be. But again, most of the doors seemed perfectly okay--_most _of them.

They were getting close though. Ooh yeah, they were _really _close. "One of these has just gotta be it," insisted Heather, talking to Janice walking at left. "Just gotta be…" Heather slowed her walk. Janice slowed as well to match her pace.

_Bingo. _One of these doors was the real deal. One of these doors was the way to go. Now…_which _door was it? Just because most of them were okay didn't mean that just any door was the correct one. And just because these few doors were giving her good vibes didn't mean that _all _of them were right. Only one of these suckers was the real deal.

Thought Heather, _So… Will it be…Door Number One, Door Number Two, or Door Number Three? _Turning around, the girl saw three more likely candidates to be opened. _And while I'm at it, I'll have to throw in choices like Door B, Door Red, or Door Over The Floor. _The girl hadn't felt this indecisive since wanting to choose between buying what could be the very last Blue Robbie tank-top at a boutique…or the very last Red Robbie tank top. But these were not Robbie tank-tops. Goodness knows that Heather had plenty enough tank-tops already. Why not? They were cheap, comfortable and plentiful--like whores. Heather wondered why her mind meandered to whores and tank-top shirts at a time like this. Trouble was, a person can't wash whores in a washing machine. Maybe throw in a nuclear-powered jackhammer…

_No! Stop it, _thought Heather. The influence of those strange machines must be messing up her mind, just like how some idiot turning on an old-fashioned electric vacuum cleaner will mess up somebody's AM radio reception. Her mind could not help but wonder and wander…

No, again. _Come on; come on!_ _Think! _Thoughts of Red-Robbie tank tops in red-light districts and machine-washable whores and mental-meandering tomfoolery _had to be left alone! _Think about this situation. Think about here and now. There _had _to be a right answer.

_Now…_all six of these doors just couldn't be totally and exactly the same. They weren't if one was literally taking them into account. The doors had various patterns of scratches. Two of them had some kind of greenish diseased-looking mold growing around the edges. Heather didn't want to find out if they were poisonous to the touch. Yet if the right door was one of them, the risk would have to be taken…

And when Heather finally saw which door was the right one, the girl wanted to kick herself. "Like, _no way!_ How could I've been _so stupid!_" One door had to be the right door because…

Heather knelt down to have a closer look-see. Yup, a sunset-colored glow was coming from beneath the slit. The glow would not have been noticeable had the lights been brighter. Still kneeling with her face close to the floor, Heather could see that none of the other doors had that glow coming from beneath them--a warm and happy glow that actually felt kind of good.

_Gotta be this one, _thought Heather in getting up. Good thing Heather was wearing jeans-pants instead of going with skirt or short-shorts, because the floor was a bit nasty--making her wipe hands on thighs. After wiping her hands, the girl had no hesitation in…_opening the door. _

_Doing so released more of that golden glow that washed over her. As for what the golden glow really was, it was hard to tell. The glow could perhaps be the beautiful color of a fading summer sunset day of childhood--the glow of a dying day. Or perhaps it was like the eerie florescent glow of a nuclear explosion during the throes of World War Triple-I--the glow of a dying world. Whatever it was, it was into that sunset-colored place beyond the door…that Heather and Janice entered. _

…

2.

…

_Heather awoke in…the hospital-prison room again, her body dressed in nothing but the thin clinging cloth of the white hospital shirt-gown, her eyes blurred over. Once more, there was warm orange-reddish light glowing in from the barred windows--the light of a dying day. Wasn't the light always dying--the light of a world that wasn't quite alive anymore? _

_Unfortunately true…_was how it was yet light enough for Heather to see the nasty and fake-flesh faces of two inhuman beings. One of them looked passably like a nurse. The other looked like almost like a doctor. But their faces weren't even as well-done as usual. It was as if they didn't care about how well their fake faces were put together this time, as if those phony faces didn't have time to be made properly.

They had been in a hurry alright, hurrying up to do something to the unconscious girl, doing something with her sleep-stilled body that laid helpless and vulnerable. Exactly what they had done to her was not apparent at first. The doctor-thing was doing something below her waist while the nurse-thing was staring into her face. _What're they trying this time!_

It couldn't have been good. Heather yelled full into the nurse-thing's phony visage. Yup, it was reason enough to justify her next action. Heather then reached for the doctor's face and dug in with fingers. It was quite a grip.

"_Cra-a-at, spackle!_" squealed the doctor-thing in its true language, standing up straight and pulling back. Getting away from Heather also meant leaving behind a handful of fleshy pale stuff, a gouging injury to its face. The fresh insult to its flesh began dribbling some dark oily stuff. Dark oily stuff or not, one could clearly see what was beneath the flesh.

Through that gouged-out hole were wriggling foreshortened things that resembled little worms…or little tentacles. Those little finger-like things were wriggling and grasping for what was once there, or they were wriggling like that because they were exposed to the open air.

_Holy crap, _thought Heather in suddenly sitting up. _Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!_ And look, the girl was still holding quite a significant piece of the doctor-thing's face. "_Oh yuck._" The girl dropped the stuff over the edges of the bed before wiping her hands on the sheet of the hospital bed.

Meanwhile, the doctor-thing was having a worse time of it. "_E-e-erg-ach!_" exclaimed the creature as it quickly began hobbling towards the door. Maybe the pain was too much. Or maybe it didn't like having its beautiful yet phony face being marred. Whatever the case, it wasn't going to hang around and have more of its face get all messed up.

"You're not getting away that easily, perv!" declared Heather in trying to get out of bed. Yet the female-looking nurse-thing was still here. It put its cold and corpse-like hands on Heather's hips in trying to hold her down, the hands feeling vaguely inappropriate being positioned there. It was a pretty strong grip too. Too late, the doctor-thing _did _get away as soon as the industrial-styled hospital-room door clanged shut.

Oh, but the doctor _was _going to get away. The nurse was too good in holding Heather down. As the girl struggled, the nurse-thing began making squealing noises that sounded too much like a sharpened bird's beak being pulled across a chalkboard. Not that the girl had never exactly done that with a bird's beak before, but that was what it sounded like. And given how immensely grating and painful the noise was to her ears, the girl never planned on never even trying anything with bird-beaks and teachers' writing surfaces.

What Heather _would _try was something else. First was her no longer resisting--allowing the nurse to hold her rather inappropriately. Thought Heather, _these freaks don't like having their faces messed up, huh?_ Then her hands went up, reaching for the nurse-thing's visage. _I probably can't make 'em look any worse. _

The nurse-thing did not have the best of reflexes or intelligence, and so it was too slow-witted to let go of Heather's hips to try fending off the attack. It was too late now. Heather's fingers found their way into both sides of the nurse-thing's phony face--which was a soft face, nice and malleable…and _grippable_. Heather was a pretty strong girl too for someone so slender--the long lean muscles of her arms and hands really getting into the effort.

Wet ripping came about as fake flesh came loose, two flaps of the fake flesh coming undone from the layer of dark-dripping tentacle-fingers. "_Ei-i-gh!_" shrieked the nurse-thing. This time, a person could see lots of those little finger-things wriggling and waving. Lots more of that dark fluid dribbled too.

Heather let go and rolled herself to the left, out of the hospital bed as the dark ichor began to drool from the nurse-thing's damaged face, dribbling onto the bed. Unlike most fluid flowing within the bodies of those inhuman beings, the stuff from around the mouth-parts tended to be somewhat greenish and also a great deal more toxic. If Heather had stayed lying there, it would have been all over her shirt--the only piece of clothing they let her have here.

Had this been an action movie, the girl would have gotten away foot-loose and fancy-free--nary a solitary dribble, drip or drop touching her skin. And just maybe there would have been her saying some witty one-liner. Something like, _Ha-ha, you missed_.

Yet this was not an action movie. This was her real life. No magical team of script-writers were around to make sure that the protagonist was perfectly protected until the final confrontation with whatever mastermind was behind this particular operation.

_A little dab will do ya, _went a phrase through her mind, the girl still kneeling by the bed…and not feeling like moving. A little dab…? Where the fork did that line come from? And why did it occur to her just then?

Maybe it was because a little dab of the dark and green-tinged stuff was doing her at the moment. It was just a little bit, just a smidgen, a tiny little droplet on her left shoulder. Heather was suddenly feeling very sick.

The nurse-thing didn't get off that easily itself, having some parts of its face taken off the front of its head. Like the doctor, the nurse-thing had little wriggling tentacle-things beneath the surface too. Those little wriggling tentacle-things were starting to change color in being exposed to the air of this room. Hard to see that in the reddish sunset-toned glow of this hospital room, yet such a change was actually happening. "_Argle!_" burp-squealed the nurse-thing before it began rapid-staggering towards the door out of here.

_Oh no, you don't, _thought Heather even while her thinking was getting kind of _woozy _from the heat and sickness. Heather thought the worst kinds of thoughts about the nurse-thing and the doctor-things. Such were thoughts so dark and vicious that the girl wasn't even thinking in words at the moment.

Red-toned meditations of murder and mutilation, thoughts of…_massive slaughter_ _flowed through her heated brain. Those thoughts actually felt good despite Heather not feeling so great herself. Heather thought about that thing being dead, dead, dead. _

"_Orple?_" went the nurse-thing before suddenly collapsing to the hard-tiled surface of this shadowed room--making the distinct sound of a meat-body hitting hard tiles. The nurse-thing arched its back with such intensity that one could hear the popping of backbones. That sounded a lot like knucklebones but on a somewhat louder scale. And there it died if one could consider the thing alive in the first place--a small dark puddle of the oily stuff forming around its mouth.

_No way did I do that, _thought Heather. Heather couldn't do that before. Yet the girl had done it now. Something done to her by the doctor-thing must have given her the ability to do what was just done. Such was what Heather considered as unconsciousness…_stole her contemplations away into darkness._

…

_A hissing of snowy static, snatches of distant sounds, it could only be one thing. That's right! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, assorted freaks of all ages, we have a radio moment once again--a Silent Hill Radio Moment. The surface upon which this radio sat was still a desk sitting in half-shadows and gloom, a desk of questionable nature. _

_A song eased its way through the hissing static. One could hear a meditative guitar clang-strumming while a beautiful girl's voice sadly wailed out some lyrics… _

_This is where your s-a-a-anity _

…_gives in_

…_and love begins._

_Ne-ver lose your grip!_

_Don't trip!_

_Don't fall._

_You'll lose…it all._

_The swee-e-etest way to die…_

_Beyond that, the song was lost to other sounds. Squeals of distant pain mixed in from the laughter of a dead studio audience from another place. Anyway, what the radio had to say was already said. Tough tamales if anybody wanted to hear any more! That's all the time we have for another…Silent Hill Radio Moment. Good night, ladies and gentlemen, and god bless…_


	9. Chapter 9

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection (by Elliot Bowers)

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 9

…

1.

…

_Now Heather just possibly, maybe, probably felt herself being pushed along…before being quite rudely dumped onto yet another floor. Rude was the only way to put it. After all, since when is it ever polite to dump anybody—physically or relationally? It would probably have hurt or been a nuisance if the girl had been fully conscious and able to feel it. So it didn't matter much yet. _

_Or possibly, maybe, probably, her being dumped didn't happen at all. Heather just could have imagined being pushed along on a gurney and shoved out. It could have been a dream-vision in a nap. The sound of the gurney faded off as Heather…_woke up.

…

_Where the Hell am I this time? _Looking around would help figure out that ponderous question. Her gaze took in a gray-tiled ceiling with sealed-off circular light-fixtures. It hurt her eyes to look directly at them. So Heather stopped looking…duh. And… Wait a gosh-darned second. Now _where _had the girl seen that style of light fixture before?

A new rushed set of thoughts sent a frightened thrill through her body. Now Heather got herself up off the floor in a scared hurry and looked around with panic-blurred vision. "Janice!_ Where are you!_"

"Oh really! You need not shout my name in such a manner, if shout anything at all," went a familiar beautiful voice--a voice like sweet chocolate. Heather turned completely around to see that pale-skinned goth-girl herself, standing right here. "Do calm yourself. It would be wisest to not alert the beings of this place to our presence. They could be assistance or hindrance to our journey, perhaps a possible threat to your physical well-being. This is especially true given how you remain weak, your abilities still not fully awakened."

"This place?" asked Heather. Becoming more calm allowed her to focus on her surroundings. Only now was the girl able to get a proper look around. Goodness knows Heather needed to focus.

A person who is particularly upset and scared can fail to see the most obvious things. Failing to see the obvious makes that person seem damned stupid too. Panicked people are the sort of people who realize they're late for work or whatever and go scampering around the bedroom for some clothes to throw on, looking for the keys… (Darn it! It's always _the keys _that go missing at the last forking second.) Never mind how everything a person needs is in plain sight--including the keys--right where one left them. Yet panicking like a certain skinny little nineteen-year-old girl in tight jeans and tank-top can make even the most obvious things not easy to see and easily overlooked.

_Now _Heather could see what this room for what it was—a waiting room? Plastic seats were lined along three of the walls, none of them beneath the square windows at one end of the room. At one's feet was the floor of hard ceramic tiles, lots of standing room for those not inclined to sit on those hard chairs of plastic backs and metal legs so common to public rooms. Maybe this place was just about the wide size of a public clinic's reception area, where a few dozen people would wait for health care or legal advice from a government office. Heather had to go to the public health clinic in the city a while back because her then-meager monthly income didn't allow her to go to a regular doctor, before cash from Dad's books started to _really _come rolling in. This was a room an awful lot like that kind of place--room enough for maybe sixty people if they didn't mind sitting on those cushionless plastic seats so common to public places.

The windows, by the way, gave quite a generous view of the world outside. Windows were common enough. Uncommon was the view seen through them. What a view it was, too—putting things into a great big whole new perspective on _everything_.

When asking about _this place, _maybe a person was better off asking about _this world_. Walking through that door in the machine-place led them out of one reality…and into another. That much was certain. Heather _felt _it to be certain. Now the problem was, nobody said that the door was a straight shot into the _correct _reality, the correct world, universe, time…or whatever. Heck, they could actually have ended up thirty thousand years into the future and not know it. _Some _kind of messed-up future or alternate-reality vision was outside of those windows--a ruined vision.

Heather had nothing to say at first in slowly walking towards those windows at the side of this sort-of waiting room. It was just a vision that was so outlandish and so incredibly _wrong _that Heather just had to keep staring to make sure it wasn't just her mind screwing with her. And if her mind _was _screwing with her, there would be no way of telling, right? A person is not going nuts when a person _knows _it.

Heather was seeing something, and that much was certain. Outside the windows was a vast and blackened field that stretched off into a vast and flat horizon, a darkened landscape beneath a sky absolutely hidden by blackened clouding. The flatness of the wasted dark-gray landscape seemed to go off and was cut off at the horizon. It was not a perfectly abandoned and empty landscape because a few jagged sets of buildings way off in the distance--buildings, chemical factories refineries or something like that, looking like metal chemistry sets way off and far away. As for the clouds? Heck no, that looked more like smoke up there in the sky--making the sky. Imagine the worst kind of air-polluting cloud-cover from a million factories, and that would be just about what it looked like up there. But it wasn't quite factories that made for that cloud cover.

An immense, massive shape moved through the toxic cloud-cover up there. It was so high and yet so huge. Gigantic circular parts flared with naked flames and billowed smoke. The thing was big as a few luxury cruise liners, painted black, and needed awesome power to stay afloat. One could hear a slight and deep rumbling from the flaring engines if one listened--a ship covered with bristling bulbous shapes that made no sense to human sensibilities. It was a _ship _up there alright, a forking _floating ship in the sky. _

Now that one knew what to look for, one could see more. Ships, a few more of them were floating along too. Though the shapes were not as visible as that one dipping just beneath cloud-cover, Heather could see the circular glows of their flaring and thrusting engines. Those huge sky-borne behemoths were far and away the most environmentally un-friendly things that Heather had ever seen. But…whoever said the powers-that-be in this world even gave a flying fart about the environment? From what Heather could see of what was outside, there wasn't much _environment _left here anyway--this world probably being one great big toxic dirtball with scattered machine-cities and machine-buildings sealed….

Was there maybe just a hint of chemical-smell to the air in this place, leaking a little bit into this ? And was Heather feeling just a _little bit _sick as a result? That little whiff was enough to make somebody feel not too well. Imagine breathing the stuff on a regular basis. Oh, it'd probably do wonders for one's chance of getting cancer or dissolving down one's insides.

Heather liked her lungs (and the rest of her insides) exactly as they were. That is to say, they were in perfectly good working order. Dad even made her quit smoking to emphasize that point. No way was the air of this place up to decent standards. No way would breathing it be healthy for even a second. The sky was all messed up, the air even worse, some freaky big mutated cruise-ships floating above while they were trapped in some public-looking building that had failing window-insulation and probably a failing air-filtration system to go along with it—an air filtration system that sounded like a weak air conditioner that only had a few frayed bits of electrical wiring finally went _pop_. "Oh my gosh… We've gotta get outta here!" was her statement aloud. "Gotta find a way out!"

"There is no way out just yet," calmly insisted Janice just as Heather made a dead run for the door. Heather's hands grasped the doorknob. Something unseen swished past Janice—dashing a heck of a lot faster than Heather's panicky run for the door. Yes, it went straight for the door.

Meanwhile, Heather was still trying to yank the door open, trying to twist and jerk the knob. That unseen presence had to do some snarling and what-not before Heather had sense enough to slowly back away. "Quit it, Janice. Just stop it right now."

"You are not to be allowed passage just yet, dearest sister, not in such an emotionally disheveled condition," soothed Janice in the sweetest and most calming of voices. "That door is one leading to a corridor of _this _world, not others. The way here has long since popped back out of existence. Hmm…"

Janice then took some slow steps towards Heather, who was still standing at what seemed to be a safe distance from the door being held shut by an unseen thing. That would be what _seems _to be a safe distance… What a joke that was. No one can ever be any physical distance from those unseen things and be safe.

"What comes to pass with you is merely another instance of epistemological shock," added Janice, stepping close enough to speak into Heather's right ear. "It shall come to pass. Besides, this place has quite…" Janice smiled. "Quite an _ambiance._ Take it in and be calm."

"That's not it," said Heather, turning to face Janice. "Look, just because I didn't have regular schooling and all doesn't make me slow on the uptake." Yet the petite girl in mall-trash clothes _was _feeling a tad bit slow on the mental draw in trying to understand this.

If it was going to be her feeling nuts every time they transitioned from one place to another, maybe it was a good time to call this whole journey off. Just go home, whip up some hot chocolate, turn on the music and read some creeped-out book on witchcraft and ghosts…while real supernatural stuff was happening here and now. _Go home, little girl._

That course of action would be just as dumb as some home-schooled stereotypes led some institutionally educated people to believe. Why _not_ quit? That was because Heather just knew that her life would forever be interrupted by the other girl, the _other _Heather—forever transitioning into that other life as it slowly wasted away. Heather's life would become rotten, the _other _Heather's life would just _stay _rotten, and it would be one big unhappy rotten-ness fest (if rotten-ness was a word) for everybody involved--loddy-doddy, every-body.

"Screw it," said Heather, really getting back kind of confidence that went behind such a statement. Hells yeah, just _screw _it. Just get to where they were supposed to go in this whacked-out place and go through. Who knows? Maybe that screwy air-filtration system would finally croak, making anybody alive in this place become not-alive.

What Heather looked forward to was how at least the air was breathable if one ignored the slight chemical hint of sickening smell in the air near those windows over there. If the air was breathable for human-people, then there had to be human-type people hereabouts. That little bit of hopeful logic was quickly countered and shut up by the recollection that the dinosaurs also once breathed human-type air. The same applied for lizards, amphibians, bees, goats, all kinds of living crap. Ditto goes for even some of the walking inhuman crap that graced the fog-enshrouded streets of _that _town, that _scre-e-ewed-up town… _This could even be one of the damned places where some of those nasty-assed things came from—visiting Heather's version of planet Earth just to say _howdy._

This must be her returning the favor once again. And if some of the people or things or whatever that lived in this place decided they didn't like visitors, Heather knew that Janice had her back. Heather cast a wary glance at Janice, _hoped _Janice would do her thing to stop any trouble. Or just maybe Janice would force Heather to do something of a mystical sort. That was in mind as Heather opened up the door. What Heather saw next wasn't yet another metaphysically distorted corridor. Oh no, what the girl saw was a great deal more entertaining than just that. "_Monsters!_" was her shout. One could barely hear her sneakered feet pattering, the girl running to grab something to use as a bludgeon. Not so hard to hear was the _crack _of a gunshot that soon followed.

…

2.

…

_To back up a few sneaker-scampered steps, what had happened was_…Heather and Janice had entered one of those mid-sized, well-lit rooms that looked as if they belonged in a factory or power plant. A great big sideways cylindrical machine was in the middle of the room, a machine about the size of an automobile and built halfway into the tiled floor. It had box-attachments with heavy-looking knobs and buttons for control. Above, bright florescent light-fixtures shone down on everything here--everything looking fresh and well-maintained, the machinery looking clean-gray. The whole place looked professionally industrial and all that. Nothing had cracks, nothing dripped from pipes, and everything seemed to be in tip-top shape.

This was excepting the downright freaky creatures actually working here. Oh goodness gracious, they were some _nasty _guys, things that didn't look right to Heather or anybody sane. (One should simply leave aside questions of Heather's sanity for the moment--given her outbursts and tendency to violence.) Lumpy faces sprouted from the ends of wrinkled necks of some, while most of the beings sported extra limbs…that actually worked. All of them wore altered clothing that had been modified to compensate for their compromised physiologies, an extra sleeve or two for the extra limbs, and sack-like attachments for those with humps where there aren't normally humps on the human physique. Various sets of eyes--not all of them in just sets of two--had look-sees to see who the fork just came in. Too bad nobody bothered to sew _hoods _onto those modified getups.

"_Monsters!_" shouted Heather. _And, here we go… _That skinny girl in jeans and tank-top made a quick scampering run for an open toolbox atop a table, various tools that had various odd attachments. This was assuming that they really were tools and it was a toolbox. Maybe those things ate metal, and it was actually their lunchbox. Ha-ha, silly humans and their silly cultural assumptions! Whatever. Tools or not, those things looked perfectly suitable for use in putting the smack-down on some messed-up characters.

Lean fine musculature in her slender arms tensed as her hands grasped the thing. Her woodish-grayish hazel eyes were wide open, looking for sight of even the slightest…tiniest…smallest little _hint _of provocation from the assorted beings at work on the machinery. All of the _monsters _had gone still as malformed mannequins.

_Crack! _As if by magic, Heather felt the metal tool snapped out of her hands. Both hands were numb. First Heather thought that Janice was up to those creepy tricks of hers. This was no simple trick, though. What happened was of a more mundane nature even if the marksmanship was not so typical.

Said a male voice, "Girl, you just might want to think about trying to beat up my workers. They're just doin' their jobs, is all. Don't interfere with that work either, or I'll put you down myself. Don't think that I can't or won't. Now just turn right very slowly. Keep those mitts below the level of navel…which I can see is exposed with that getup of yours."

_Perv… _Heather turned herself to face this new threat, expecting to see yet another inhuman being with all kinds of wrong facial or bodily features. He sounded normal and spoke English--which some people in the world thought was one of the craziest languages in the world. Make that the world Heather came from anyway. Instead the girl came to look at a perfectly ordinary-looking sort of guy who looked to be a …janitor?

His gray long-sleeved workshirt and jeans-overalls just had to be the outfit of a maintenance sort, a circular blue cap on his head and work-shoes on his feet. And he had a belt round his waist that had square attachments. It was a tool-belt, as would be expected of those maintenance personnel if one ignored the _machete _and some of those boxes no doubt being for ammo of some kind. Now those things _had _to be tools, because no way do humans carry around their lunches on their belts. His outfit covered everything but face and hands--a lean hard face of slight tan, hard hands at the ends of sleeved arms to match. Everything about him was lean, tough and of somebody who had seen a lot of tough times and work in life. It was the right hand that held his firearm of choice at the moment--a smooth pistol that looked to be manufactured from one piece of dark-blue metal.

"Well now," he said, "That's better." He lowered his right arm, and the pistol was suddenly gone. "You and your elegant lady-friend can just stand or sit right where you are until we can try to make some sense out of each others' positions. And if I come to figure that you're here to do something wrong or are lying, just maybe I won't want you around anymore."

_This is just great, _thought Heather, _I'm nearly shot up by some mop-jockey with a freaky pistol and a gangster attitude. Now he wants to shoot the breeze… Hah, some pun. _The girl then thought about asking the janitor-guy how a pistol with no external moving parts can work. Come to think of it, that pistol had looked just a little bit like a blank prop out of a comic-book movie sci-fi epic. Heather thought of the pistol that way because her place of work actually sold comics. Why not? Her job sold paperback romance novels to horny and lonely businesspeople, right? (Yeah, make the term _paperback romance novels _into an acronym, and watch as it almost spells what it really is.) Except this guy here didn't look as if he went for nonsense—not porn, not trash-talk about his pistol, none of that. In fact, the janitor looked as if he took nonsense the same sort of way that a priest would look at dinner with atheists…with a side-serving of sodomy.

Perhaps with a bit of priestly mercy and empathy, he observed, "You don't seem like you're from around here, if you don't mind me saying so. Well, the big truth is that nobody really belongs around here anymore." He nodded sideward at the center of this machine-room, where the inhuman beings were looking avidly and nervously at these proceedings--a set of dangerous people talking. Hopefully it wouldn't come to hurting or killing. "I'm hoping your coming here is purely by accident. Nobody wants to be hereabouts. Not even the ones that ended up here. Let's go to the averpal room and have ourselves a chat."

What the fork is an _averpal room?_ Heather then recalled the room they just walked out of--the place that looked like a waiting room. What people would wait for around here, Heather didn't know. Heather didn't _want _to know.

…

In that public-looking room with the big windows, the janitor sort of guy walked in first and went to get chairs. He snap-drew that pistol of his when the chairs began moving themselves and arranged in front of him. He looked on with that pistol of the blank exterior still aiming at nothing he could see. Trouble was that he could not see anything to fire at. It was never a good idea to open fire on something when one is unsure of one's target. It could be an enemy, could be an ally. _You can't hit what you can't see_.

Nevertheless, something here--seen or not darn it--had to be moving these chairs. After too long and hair-raising of a moment, the four chairs quickly slipped across the hard-tiled floor. And there they stopped.

The chairs were now arranged as so facing each other. If a person was to take laser-accurate land-survey tools to the arrangement, one would find that the chairs were exactly eighteen feet apart--give or take a few hundred micrometers due to temperature fluctuations. One of them was also put out of true when the janitor prodded it with the toe of his left work-shoe.

Said Janice, "The chair will not bite, if that is your concern." Unsaid was, _Be more concerned with what moved the chairs. _"We shall be seated, shall we not?" Janice then held out the bottom hem of her open jacket before sitting down herself and crossing those exquisite legs of hers. The sharp heel of her left boot stayed off the floor, her hands resting lightly on a thigh. Her big dark eyes regarded the janitor. "Chairs can be moved more easily than your words, it seems."

The janitor reacted better than Heather expected. Somebody who just saw chairs move by way of something unseen would otherwise be immensely creeped out. Or maybe Heather's interpretation was just off. That guy could have just been waiting an extra second or two to see if it was safe. A more carnal reason for him to stand there like that was Janice--_all _of Janice. Her open leather jacket revealed the long firm shape of an exquisite body in tight black, the hem going well up her exquisite thighs, legs in boots that were just too dark and shiny to resist staring. Janice was just this side of pale--as in, this side of pale short of being something atop a mortician's table--but still quite a sight… But that was just Heather's perception. That janitor-guy had probably seen his share of beauties in his day, or he had an idea of what Janice really was.

Once more, the pistol was put away with that same millisecond-speed, vanishing as soon as the janitor's right hand went past hip-level. He then had a seat opposite Heather, Janice in the seat forward-right. The seemingly unoccupied chair was forward and left. To that, the guy gave it a curious look and returned his gaze to Heather. Some kind of connection was between that unoccupied chair and the petite skinny girl in jeans and tank-top. What it was, he could not tell and did not want to ask just yet.

Be it games, stories or conversations, how things end up are determined by how they start. Janice took control of this meeting by getting it started. "We are on a journey," said Janice. "My close companion and I seek the source of great instability. Part of it may in fact be caused by her."

Thought Heather, _My fault? I was just minding my own business when all this craziness started. Whatever. _"It's not really my fault, I don't think," was her statement aloud. "I'm just coming along to help put a stop to it." _As if I had a choice. Never mind almost having my throat ripped out by some psycho goth-girl. Yeah, and forget about being shoved the Hell into her freaky phantom limo… Goth-mobile._ "All I know is, this was the way to go. We're going where we have to be, not really where we _want _to be."

"Tell you what," began the janitor. "You're pretty much confessing that you're doing the wrong thing, coming here and all. I just knew that you two didn't belong to this place. Nobody from anywhere else is supposed to come here anymore or go anywhere else." He leaned forward in his seat, his left hand on his left knee. "Do you have any idea what kind of damage you two are adding, people coming and going like that?"

Janice gave a slight smile with just her lips, darkened lips in a pale face spreading. Those big dark eyes of hers remained neutral and dead-looking as ever even when taking a glance at Heather. "Some would not even consider them people at all."

"Jeez! Is _everybody _getting on my case today?" went Heather. "Okay, look…" Her hands were out with fingers splayed open, as if holding out the idea for consideration. "_You, _Mister Janitor-Guy, you sound to be just about as worried as we are, worried with what's going wrong. Janice pulled me along, talking about how it was my fault, caused by another _me. _It's complicated and weird and I don't wanna get into the details right now. What I want to know is, are you going to help us out? I want out of this place before I breathe too much of that wrong kind of air leaking in from those windows. The stuff seems worse than smoking. Glad I quit, too."


	10. Chapter 10

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

"Red"

"Same"

lyrics and vocals by Dani Siciliano

Chapter 10

…

1.

…

_This time, it really was going to be the hospital bed. There was no way around it, at least not this time. Rising into consciousness, the girl was becoming aware of her body. With that came the feeling of the cushion beneath her--the damned hospital bed. And the blurry flatness above her was the ceiling. Things looked blurry because the girl just wasn't feeling totally here yet. It didn't help that not much light was in this room. Above, the light fixtures were dead dark circles. Light was not a problem, though, because that ever-present sunset-colored glow from the dying daylight outside came through the barred and hard-glassed windows of this hospital-prison room. _

_Heather was..._back in the bed-saddle again--riding that four-post cushioned platform, set in a room that was too hard to be one in a place of healing. This was a return to the living nightmare of this reality. This reality, this place, it was where they only wanted girls being made barefooted and pregnant…making one girl in particular barefooted and pregnant. Too bad for them, they only succeeded with the _barefooted _part. Heather would be bare-assed as well if the shirt-garment they let her have was any shorter. Damn thing just made it below the double-shape of her butt-cheeks in back while barely covered what was a girl was obligated to cover in front.

Meanwhile, back to now… As if sensing the girl's return to the waking world--least this waking world-- some nurse-things suddenly moved to hunker down over her. Their phony pale visages looking more fake than ever even in the low gloom of the sunset-toned light glowing through the barred window.

Of course the lights were out. _That _was why the unseen presence didn't allow electricity to flow through the lights just now. The unseen presence figured it would try to keep the lights off and let Heather get some shut-eye while things were done to her body. The trick didn't work last time, ending up with a certain doctor-thing not having an intact face anymore. Yet just because something didn't work the first time didn't mean that they wouldn't try doing the same crap again…and again some more. A doctor-thing was in the corner and doing something.

Never mind that for now, though. _Face it, jerks, _thought the girl. _I'm not some darned parrot. Putting the lights out won't make me stay sleepy-bye. No way in Hell. _So went Heather's thinking before shifting her thoughts into a more…_dangerous mode. Thoughts became red as the hatred began to build. _

It was easier this time. The girl just had to let her hatred for the nurse-things build, the hatred for this place build, all the things done to her. "_Cra-a-at…!_" began to squeal one of the nurse things before gagging and choking as the pain inside increased. Wait, hold on folks. The nurse-thing was trying to say something. "_Cr-a-a-at… Ach-ach! Cra-a-at…_" We are physiological difficulties, so please stand by. "_Cra-a-a-at… Cra-a-at…!_" Come on, now. We know the nurse-thing is special! We know it can do it… "_Cra-a-a-at_…_spackle!_"

There we go! _Cra-a-t, spackle! _Not that the complete statement made as much sense as the first half to those not knowing the lingo, but there it goes anyway. And there go the nurse-things, beginning to twitch and spasm as massively torturous bouts of _pain _began to fill their bodies, the _pain _penetrating the moldy dark mush they have for brains, their minds feeling suffering. This was assuming that the creatures had individual minds at all, being controlled by the unseen presence.

Well _something _in their heads was reacting to what Heather was doing. Now all the meat-puppet nurse-things wanted was to get the Hell away. The door squealed open a little bit, unlocked, and waited for them.

What did it feel like to come under attack by Heather's mind just then? Maybe the closest analogy would be their minds feeling as if being electrocuted, their bodies feeling like chopped-up glass being pulled through their muscles, good stuff like that. By the way, some slick meaty things were sliding their way up the walls from where the doctor-thing was doing its thing in the corner.

Heather's thinking shifted back to normal as the nurses' high-heels beat a hasty--yet shaky--retreat. _Yeah, get outta here! Don't come back! _The girl then got herself off and away from the bed, her bare feet on the hard tiles, walking towards the nurses--who were going the opposite way on hard hoof-like white heels. All the while was Heather thinking especially vicious thoughts in a certain way. Thinking in that certain way allowed her to send pain and suffering into others, which is what the sort of thing the girl did her best to avoid doing while living outside the walls of this hospital-prison place. Now it was perfectly okay.

_Click-wham! _So came the sound of triumph! And for now, _triumph _was the sound of a hospital-prison door being slammed shut after nurse-things had made a speedy getaway. The doctor-thing had preceded the nurses and had already left. Those creatures would be in for more of the same if they came back too.

Heather walked towards the door, her bare feet on the hard floor. And there the girl stood, thinking of how the situation was really changed now. When Heather first came here, those things could do whatever they wanted, whenever. Now they couldn't. _Now _it was Heather's turn to set things her way.

Not yet though, because Heather was feeling tired. Not that her fighting had cost her any physical effort, but using her abilities had drained her in some way. The girl was already half-starved from the questionable foodstuffs they barely provided and too tired by far. Just being here also sucked on a mental level.

Exhaustion was coming. A headache was starting to pulse pain behind her eyes as sleep threatened to close over her. That headache started to blur her vision a little and make it hard to see or hear well. Her own pulse and breathing seemed to fill her immediate senses, just keeping her body up and moving an effort. The bed was way over there across this darkened room.

It was her dazed-and-tired condition which kept the girl from seeing the wet warm blob-things that had since gone to the ceiling. So _that _was why the doctor-things made a recent appearance. Well, it wasn't here to swap juicy gossip with the nurse-things! Those doctor-things, those guys were always up to no good. Now that no-goodness had since gotten its way upto the ceiling and about to make trouble.

And when it comes to no good, those creatures attached to the ceiling looked just the part. They weren't good to look at--nasty, _nasty _things. Maybe the best way to describe them would be to think of a slug or a flatworm, if a slug or flatworm made it to being the size of a cat and colored like blood. These blood-colored slug-creatures also had little fist-sized heads projected from those round-meat bodies on wrist-sized necks, heads with beady little dark eyes that were darker than the darkness of the universe. Those eyes were on Heather's back.

Really, their eyes were on her back and not on her backside--not her butt, not necessarily certain other parts of her anatomy. They waited for Heather's staggering progress to take her a little farther along. Wait for it…

Okey-dokey-fanokey! Here we go, boys. _Geronimo-o-o! _Or…_banzai-i-i-i!_ Heck, try _oblamah_ if so inclined. Whatever. Just go for it_, _dudes!

Something about the size of a pit bull, if dropped from the height of the ceiling, would not have enough mass to bring down the average full-grown adult. Yet though Heather was a year beyond the age of majority, no one can say that the girl had the full height or mass of the average physically mature human being. (That's another thing. No short jokes for Heather, please. Goodness knows the girl got enough of those from some jerks at work.) Suffice to say that the meat-slug thing _did _land on Heather's back. It also _did _bring her down--not that it took much to bring down the tired girl anyway.

"_Whoa!_" went Heather, before going _thud. _Having fallen, the girl ended up lying sideways and reaching for her back as the warm wetness soaked through the upper back of her thin shirt--consequently upon her upper back near her neck. The soaking felt electrifying and hurt at first. Only for a little while was it like this. Then a warm and very delicious feeling began to flow through her body as it was starting…_to maybe feel sorta… _

Forget words like _maybe, sorta _and even _possibly… _No, this was _definitely _starting to feel good. It was a surprise at all that anything in this place could feel like _this. _The feeling wasn't unwelcome.

And as this sweet pleasure made its thrilling course through her body, as her body from the neck down began to relax, part of her was just a little worried. Had it been just a _normal _person, that person would likely have succumbed to the temptations of the creature. Lots of ordinary people loved sex and spent most all their time chasing it. And here this slug thing here was, making people feel sexed up for free? Hey, baby! Why chase hot-looking people who like to say _no _when the hot slug-thing can give you all the ass-action you need? But Heather was not a normal person.

Heather forced her own body to get up even while everything was still feeling _just so damned sweet! _Pleasured sounds resonated from deep within her throat, her mouth open and slack, feeling all loose and good all over_._ Yet her mind persisted even while her own body had surrendered.

Still the girl tried to get up.And in trying to get up, one of her bare feet stepped onto another one of the slug-things too, with even her slight weight squashing the thing. The little thing's eyes _popped _out its head while the sides of its own body split. Dark stuff came out.

Meanwhile, the slug-thing still on her back tried redoubling its erotic efforts--big mistake. It sent a fresh burst of intense pleasure through Heather. _Mmm…_ That extra-intense burst of goodness made Heather's body react accordingly. And Heather let her body react--making it suddenly arch her spine and fall onto her back. Her back was exactly where the creature so happened to be positioned.

_Splat _was the word for what happened. Just like its foot-stomped brethren, that creature was suddenly not physically viable anymore. It was _dead. _Its death put a stop to that _oh-so-good _feeling as well.

Heather's head began to clear up from that feeling. Meanwhile, the last of those meat-slugs in the room was dumb enough to try dropping down from the ceiling--late to the party and everything. That was no excuse to not try at all, though. Yes, indeed! If at first you don't succeed, molest and molest again.

That last one came straight down and missed Heather completely--not lading atop her head of currently dark and shiny hair. Suffice to say that the meat-slug creature _missed. _It laid stunned on the floor from the drop, perfectly vulnerable for another well-placed right stomp of her foot.

Heather had killed three of those things. Three was all there were. Really, no more unseen lurking meat-creatures were around. They were simply too precious and rare in this world to be used in such a manner. Such a fact would probably explain why the unseen presence made its frustration known with a _grow-w-w-wl _that sounded out from beneath the floor and behind walls, mostly coming from the floor.

"Nice try, you scumbag-pervert," said Heather aloud to the unseen presence. "Your stupid crap didn't work, though!" Heather also would also have added a phony laugh to spice up her statement but was just too tired to do that. Instead, the girl toed one of those squashed meat-slug things. It was supposed to be a kick, but her body was still a little bit weak and shaky..

The dead thing crumbled apart even from that slight impact. Its insides were completely dried up and gone as well, leaving a crispy outside. Where its insides went, Heather didn't give a fork. All that mattered was that the nearest slug-thing was rapidly dissolving as if the air in this place was no good--good for human lungs but not for its dead corpse. The other slug-things were gone, and so was the patch of slime on her back--drying and even with a crustiness on the outside that was going away.

Whatever. "So now what?" pressed Heather. "Are you gonna try another set of those nurse-things? No? Why not send some more of those messed-up doctors? I'd like to give their brains the once-over, just to see how fast I can kill 'em. Anything you send to me alive can be made dead in two shakes of a lamb's tail! Just you watch! "

Yet Heather's confidence would waver when confronted with what the unseen presence actually did send next. The unseen presence had been holding back, but now it was going to try and play quite a mighty card against the girl. The door opened, and so did Heather's mouth. "Dad?" asked Heather. "Are you really here?"

…

2.

…

For a live-at-home girl of nineteen to recognize her father, living with her father for almost that many years, such was highly expected and very normal. Never mind if the rest of these circumstances were perhaps not so normal. This goes even if most girls of nineteen would prefer to _not _recognize their paternal parent--or either of their parents. Heather was that way in the days before her Dad had her sent away to get better. Being _sent away _made for her being sent _here._ As for that _getting better _part of things, that wasn't happening. And it was this place that Heather was trapped for too long, losing the life had before.

Still, it was her _Dad _standing there. Dad, he was the only other normal human being that Heather had seen here. Her father, a broad-shouldered clean-jawed sort appearing to be dressed as usual. What was the usual for him could maybe not be considered the usual for most—a in buttoned vest-top worn with…jeans-pants. A brown leather jacket was worn over the shirt and vest to keep off the chill, an outfit complete with boots on his feet. That was definitely a writer would wear, an eclectic clash of styles all in one outfit--mixing lawyer-looking professionalism with blue-collar working guy casualness, along with a dash of cowboy. Any number of metro-sexual fashion designers would be intrigued or insulted.

And there he stood, working-man-professional-cowboy-writer's outfit and all. How long did it take for him to get here? Through what did he have to go? The things running this hospital let Heather have books and writing materials, but they didn't let her have a clock, not that such a time-keeping device would work in this place anyway. Even the freakin' time-of-day itself was not right, so it was hard to tell the passage of time that way. Bad days, days gone wrong, these days had to come to an end at some point. This had to be the point. Her _Dad _had come to the rescue_._ He must have seen what kind of Hell-hole this place was and used brute force in getting to this room.

"Some dump this place turned out to be, huh?" voiced the girl to her father, standing in the doorway. "I'm guessing those things must've given you a hard time and all."

Her father began walking some steps into this hospital-prison room. Why was he _walking, _for crying out loud? More of those nurse-things could be along at any minute. That guy just couldn't go fast enough. Or maybe he was just tired and a little sore from having killed every single last one of those things. Heather imagined her father having to use his pistol to deal with some of them, and then using whatever bludgeoning weapon was handy if he ran out of bullets. By bludgeon and by bullets, he came for her.

On that point, some things need consideration, contemplation and recollection. Lots of things were the same or at least _seemed _the same with Daddy. Yet that did not change the basic and fundamental fact of this being an alternate reality--as in, a whole different universe. One of those same-but-not-really-the-same things going here would be laws regarding firearms. The Heather of one world lived in a country where they regulated the heck out of pistols, submachine guns, rifles, sawed-off shotguns, and whatever. In such a world, it took piles of paperwork and about a year to just own one weapon legally. (And about how the prices on those things could cost reach the four-digit dollar range, _for-get it!_) Yet the Heather of another world lived in a world where pistols, rifles, shotguns and the rest were more commonplace than pancake mix. Firearms were in fact so common then and there that careless jokers would drop spare boxes of bullets and shotgun shells like people dropping pocket change. People don't mean to drop pocket change, but it happens anyway--with people dropping boxes of ammo when fumbling for the keys in their jackets. Of course the police of such places generally did a good job of keeping the towns and cities from becoming scenes of shootouts worthy of any Western cinematography. (_Dr-a-aw, caowboah!_)

So, there would be no problem in bringing or finding a pistol here and go about one's business with bullets blazing. Nobody would try making any laws against shooting monsters! Most folks didn't even believe that they existed--least not anyone wanting to be considered normal. There we go again with that adjective, _normal. _Also, any politician proposing such a law during a legislative committee gathering would surely find himself bundled away to a place where the room's walls are soft and the doctors' opinions are hard. So if Dad had to get in some much-needed marksmanship practice with the live targets of this place--if the contaminated entities of this place could be considered alive--so be it.

And all this while, Dad _still _hadn't said a word. He was also _still _taking his good old time in making his way towards the bed where Heather was primly sitting--her knees together and hands folded on top. Her lost hazel eyes stared…

_Whoops! _Did he just stagger? "Dad? What's wrong? Are you hurt?" gently asked the girl. Heather could sound like such a sweetie…when not shouting cuss-words and making nasty threats against the physical well-being of others. The girl did have a temper. Yet now that temper was subdued, the girl sounding all like, _aww_.

Dad still didn't say anything. Heck, the dude wasn't even making eye-contact. His dark brown eyes were just staring straight ahead--looking towards and through the barred-window view of the sunset-toned world outside. Daylight was always of a dying sort hereabouts. Everything out there may as well not really be alive, at least resembling things alive, a landscape of shuffling and distorted creatures that only bore passing resemblance to what existed before along with things that weren't supposed to exist in this world at all--the way it was outside now.

Let it be known that her Dad had been living outside the hospital, living in that landscape out there for all this time—as had the others of the small city. Also let it be known that her father was just an ordinary guy. He didn't have super-strength like Superman or a magician's ability to fend off unseen forces. What Heather's Dad _could _do was point firearms in the general direction of targets and keep pulling the trigger until at least most of the shots hit their target. He was better at swinging a really mean pipe, actually, or some other bludgeoning tool instead of marksmanship. Good as dear old Dad was at swinging blunt heavy objects and pulling triggers (though not good enough to know that one _squeezes _triggers of firearms to get decent aim, for example), he could not hold out indefinitely. No ordinary guy can resist the forces of darkness forever.

Realization of what her Dad had become dawned slowly and shockingly to Heather, making her mouth hang open, a gasp sounding from her throat. It looked like Dad but wasn't her Dad. That was just a thing which wore her dead father's body--something not alive, but not something really dead either.

As he shuffle-stepped closer, more details became clear, like how bits of that dark fluid were at the corners of his eyes and from a nostril. The eyes looked empty and dead-lost as if nobody was really home behind them. The pastiness of his skin would have been more noticeable if this room was illuminated with normal lighting instead of the warm orange-red glow of the low orange-red light of dying days in a dying world. Dying too, not alive in the same way he was before, that _was _her Dad--being here in physical form only. The thing shuffle-walking into this room was not her father any damned more. Now it was just a contaminated, shambling former person made all full of the nasty ichor and darkness that filled all the creatures.

_Dad, _thought Heather, doing her best to tell herself the shuffling thing was not…not…_not her father_. A dead guy can't be anybody's parent. They'd have a hard enough time getting a pulse, let alone getting the means to be a breadwinner for a family. That would make him a _dead-beat _Dad in that case, wouldn't it? Get it? Get it, a _dead-beat Dad! __Haw-haw-haw_… His dead shuffling feet beat out dead-shuffling beat in still making his shambolic slow-assed way over here.

_You're not my Dad. You're just a thing. _That in mind, Heather began to change her thoughts in the same way used to hurt and kill the doctor-things and nurse-things. It was hard at first in directing those thoughts at what was once her father. Then it became easy. Her thoughts…_became red-tinged once more. These were thoughts of vicious and malicious intent, considerations of pain and spattered life-blood, mangled corpses, cruelty mixed in with laughter…_

When Heather began imposing the pain, the thing that had once been her father reacted in the same way that the nurse-things and doctor-things did. Why not? After all, those entities and her once-Dad were made up of the same nasty stuff inside now.

The Dad-thing shook and shimmied, the head spasm-shaking once. Then the thing tried walking away, nasty gurgling sounds coming from the mouth--along with flecks of that nasty dark fluid. It fell to the floor as the intensity of the mental assault intensified, beginning to cough up great big forking gobbets of its insides, getting sicker by the second. If that thing had any semblance of being alive before, it wouldn't for long--wearing Dad's body like that...

When it was over, the door of this room clicked open. In came some nurse-things, pasty-dead legs beyond short-skirt hems moving, coming close enough to use those slender dead-flesh arms to reach for the Dad-thing's ankles. They dragged it out of this hospital-room that way, by the ankles. In leaving, the Dad-thing left a mouth-wide trail of the dark ichor in being dragged out of here. And once they were out, the door _whamped _shut once more.

Heather wasn't feeling particularly victorious after this latest using of her abilities. Nor was this feeling like a particularly broken and sad moment. The feeling probably hadn't sunk in just yet. Maybe tears and hurt would come later. Or maybe, Heather shouldn't care because Dad was the one who put her here in the first place. All the townspeople wanted her in here, thinking her a dangerous and strange freak of a girl. Even while the cityscape outside was getting to be kind of freaky itself, the fog, the messed-up animals, they still wanted to put her away… Dad didn't need her tears, not anymore, and neither did the town outside of this hospital.

Everything was going down and wrong. Everything in the town had already turned wrong, taken to this dying landscape. Nothing could be done about it. Heather sniffed aloud, blurry wetness coming to her eyes. Tears came after all.

…

_The radio still sat there in a gloomed and shaded place between worlds, a place barely in focus and steeped in near-darkness. No way would the darkness ever lift enough to give a clear idea as to what kind of desk made home for the radio. And what little plastic jobber of a transistor-operated analog radio-wave receiver be complete without some static? Oh yeah, when it came to static, this thing had levels of the stuff that were just diabolical. Satanic static was how a rock-star would put it. It was a radio with the static of satanic panic._

_Something burbled and hissed, a dead voice making a word that sounded like _chermungus, _whatever that was supposed to mean. Another voice said something like, _chorkumbleff. _The voices coming through the static were saying things in languages not heard on Earth before--at least not on the versions of the planet that were called Earth. _

_At one point came a voice that actually spoke in a terrestrial language. Never mind that the voice sounded as if it gargled a mouthful of highway-side gravel and tried rinsing out with the liquid stuff that leaked out of landfills. In short, it was a really, really nasty-sounding voice. And that really, really nasty-sounding voice said, "Tonight, dearest of all my friends, we will go a-a-all the way…_" _Indeedy-doo, buckaroo! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, miscellaneous creatures in all phases of physical development, welcome to yet another…Silent Hill Radio Moment. _

_And what moment such as this would be complete without music? So without further ado, the static gave way just enough to let through some tunes. The song had some hop-pop-skip instrumentals going in the background as the sound of a woman's voice meditatively sing-chanting some words…_

_The sun-n-n…set._

_The sun-n-n…set._

_The sun will soon be set!_

_The sun-n-n…_

_The sun will soon be set_

_Your shadow will be 'round!_

_The darkness isn't yet…_

_Anticipation strong!_

_Sun-n-n…_

_I just can't…_

_Darkness!_

_Anticipate! _

_That faded out. Some sniggling and chortles bubbled into the static that almost totally washed out the women singing. That would be a strong almost. This time, the radio was not done saying what it wanted to say. Now we have a double feature. What sounded like an altered bass-guitar steadily strummed a beat as that same woman's voice sang and moaned another set of lyrics from another song._

_Was a change…!_

_Was it di-i-ifferent? _

_Was it, same?_

_Was it go-o-one_

…_.with you clo-o-osing_

…_the doo-o-or!_

_As you did_

_As you say_

_The _other _day._

_As you say_

_As you did_

_The _other _day._

_As you did_

_As you say_

_The _other _day…_

_And then everybody's favorite static hiss made its vengeful comeback, other-worldly voices chortling and making faint sounds just beneath the static. That's it, no more singing for now. No way was there going to be a _triple _feature. There's no such thing. Just the idea of it would be abso-freaking-lutely ridiculous. _Reductio ad absurdum _was how those Ancient Romans said it--the act of making an argument or statement seem so ridiculous that it can't be real. The Ancient Romans are all dead now though. Triple feature, hah! One may as well start believe in saucer-riding, big-headed space-aliens armed with zap-guns and bad attitudes. Speaking of weird beings, Heather so happened to be coming around right about now._


	11. Chapter 11

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 11

…

1.

…

_Heather was pushing herself put out of sleep. All the while was her thinking it had better not be a return to that damned hospital again…damn it. Her blurry eyes took in sight of lights that glared down from on high. The girl sat up, took in a breath and_…promptly coughed a few times. The air in this place sucks, leaving a chemical aftertaste that stayed at the back of her mouth. Welcome back to reality….

At least, it would be _this _reality. Anyway, this was still that machine-building place--a place in a burnt-out world that had who-knows-what flying around in its smoky and toxic sky. Because they were still here, it must mean that they weren't done here. Still here…

Looking down, Heather saw that they had laid her on an arrangement of chairs. Setting them five in a row made for an impromptu lying surface--laying her out like the main attraction at a funeral. It wasn't going to be her funeral anytime soon. And no way was this going to end with either herself or her other self being dead.

Another sudden cough, Heather was trying not to panic. How long could a person breathe this stuff? It was filtered. That still didn't make the notion of being here and inhaling here any more comforting. The girl could very easily imagine her lungs slowly becoming a cancer-ridden lumpy mess inside of her, but not before her throat began to collapse due to the harshness of the chemicals. If not today, maybe the effects would kick in even long after being away. Breathing here was probably like toking on cigarettes laced with a weak but steadily effective acid, and this wasn't talking about the kind of _acid _that made people see lots of cool stuff that really wasn't there.

"You take too much time in regaining consciousness," said Janice, sitting cross-legged on a chair nearby, her slender body reclining. When one crosses legs wearing a garment that short, it tends to reveal more than conceal—which was probably the point. "I considered having our newfound ally here await your return before recommencing his total explanation. It does bear rather interesting consideration."

_Wow, _thought Heather, _Janice thinks a janitor has interesting things to say? _The life and times of a scrub-bucket savant must really make for some awesome consideration!Not that Heather personally had any sort of class bias against janitors. Heather herself was a girl who worked. To say _working girl, _by the way, would be a euphemism for _street-walker_, which was a euphemism for the kind of profession where girls wear fishnet stockings and wait for guys to come on by. Heather did a lot of not-so-nice things in her life—maybe a little shoplifting, maybe a little smoking, maybe a little underage drinking. (Okay, so maybe it was a _lot _of underage drinking.) But the fishnet-stockings-and-sidewalks gig would definitely be beyond even her moral scruples. Looking at Janice on the other hand…

_Whamp! _Something _slapped _the floor of this waiting place. Heather's eye-focus snapped to where the sound had come from. The girl saw nothing which could have made that racket—didn't see it. Yet just because something wasn't seen didn't mean it wasn't there. Janice's unseen servants were indeed present.

"Are you yet prepared to pay heed, or do you slumber still?" asked Janice. "I mean, _really. _There are times in which your attention span is easily comparable to that of an incorrigible school child. Speaking of which, when _did _you graduate from your last place of schooling?" A smile played on her lips.

"You know about that," responded Heather, _just as you know too much about me already._ _So what if Dad home-schooled me? High school's overrated. It's probably better than ending up in some crummy joke of a place where nobody's really your friend and everybody wants to make your life Hell. Other people, always trying to make life Hell for somebody. _

"Perhaps I do know," said Janice. "I also know that you are more capable of resisting those fits which bear you away from time to time. Upon the next visit of hers, I plan on telling your other sister that our goal would be better served."

"What are you talking about?" asked Heather. "No, wait. Don't tell me…" _Don't tell me somebody takes over when I'm… _Why didn't you tell me about that?"

"_Oh-h-h_, I am so deeply sorry to have upset you!" said Janice from her seated place. Yet the taller girl didn't sound sorry, though. "Never mind that for now! More pressing matters are at hand. Our ally here has an earful for your consideration."

The Janitor had said nothing all this while. Now he had his chance. "Baby, it goes a little somethin' like this. Like I was telling your ah… friend, I've got a damned important shop goin'."

Heather pivoted herself back around on jeans-covered butt to face the janitor. Her sneakered feet going to the floor and her eyes became angry. Here we go…

"Okay, two things," started an angry Heather. "For one thing, you hit the word _friend _a bit too hard, buddy. Janice and I aren't _friends _the way you probably think. My Dad was a writer. He taught me all about stuff like _subtext _and _innuendo_, so don't think you can put one over on me. For another thing, I don't care about what kind of place you've got here…or even about those freaky _weirdoes _in the next room, working that on that machine. All I care about is getting outta here before I end up with a messed-up mind and bad lungs too. So cut to the chase, 'cause I'm running short on patience."

To that, the Janitor clenched his jaw. A person could tell that some not-so-nice words were set to come out of _his _mouth too. But in the interest of keeping the peace, he bit most of those words back. He still had to say something though. "Alright… Now let me tell _you _something, baby. My _weirdoes _and I are probably helping to do one of the most import jobs you've never even heard about. Most everybody in that world you come from are care-free. Those people of yours, they go cruisin' to and from work, getting themselves home to guzzle some beer and watch TV after doing their nine-to-five jobs. So long as they've got a car that goes _zoom_, beer that goes _glug _and a television remote that goes _doink, _they couldn't give a rat's fart about anything else. And that's the thing. _They…don't…care_.

"Now tell me, kiddo. What would happen if their world started goin' just a little wrong? What if a little somethin' leaked into their cozy little generic lives that interrupted the holy trinity of work, beer and boob-tube?"

Heather was getting a tad bit impatient. "Like what? An earthquake and stuff? Don't tell me you think you keep stuff like that from happening!"

The Janitor sucked in a long breath and let it out, likely a habit from probably having been a smoker. It was that kind of moment when a smoker would take in a long drag….and blow it out in a long way to produce a stream of white smoke. Now the effect was more psychosomatic than nicotine-based. "What I'm _tryin' _to tell you is, those people can live that comfortably and _not _have to worry about things goin' wrong. You bein' here is wrong. When people end up bein' where they're not supposed to be and able to go where they shouldn't, that's wrong."

"You said that already! And I never said I wanted to be here anyway!" yelled Heather. Her voice went down an octave. "I don't believe you. No way can some mop-swinging madman and his band of carnival freaks help keep the world from going to Hell. You'd better stop your lying and start making some sense soon, or I'm gonna _find _a way for you to make sense."

The Janitor looked at Janice and said, "How you two ended up bein' close and stayin' that way is beyond me." He looked once more to Heather. "As I was sayin', little Miss Fireball, things _can _go wrong_. _Imagine if people started getting snatched up tentacles that emerge from their closets. What if some more people out on some long highway in the Midwest started disappearin' without a trace, vanishin' off the face of their earth… Ya think the Bermuda Triangle's bad, imagine what'd happen if what happened to you started happenin' most every day and most everywhere. Not that you're the first strangers to end up here, but there you go."

"Oh yeah?" asked Heather. "So what happens to people when they disappear like that? Do they get gobbled up by tentacle monsters?"

"_No-o-o_…" began the Janitor. "If you wanna know what happens to some people, go back to the primary resonator-compensation room back there and look around. You'll see they're doin' just fine—though they ain't quite the same after bein' here a bit."

Heather held her breath. Still, her mouth hung open. Maybe they breathed the air for too long. "You mean the air of this place…?"

The Janitor paused. A smirk stretched sideways across that lean tan jaw of his. "Nah! Just joshin' ya, kiddo. Those guys were _born _that way. Yer an easy mark, ya know that?"

Janice then interrupted. "We are indeed not the first to have passed this way. Far too many must have done so in that case. Indeed true is our presence being one of ill-tidings." Her dark eyes looked far away, her voice also sounding distant. "The scenario is worse than I was led to believe."

Because Janice sounded worried, _Heather _was starting to get worried. Heather and Janice were not the best of friends. Being kidnapped and having one's throat nearly crushed would tend to make for that kind of relationship. Here Janice was, with all kinds of awesome gothy powers of darkness and probably with a gazillion dollars to her name, and that was her _still _sounding like something was going wrong. That, and Janice probably knew everything about stuff like this, more things to worry about. People with power and money like Janice aren't _supposed _to be worried. That wasn't how things were supposed to go.

That would be the case if this was a Hollywood movie. In a Hollywood movie, the almighty good guys are supposed to go in guns-blazing with awesome one-liners and kick-butt abilities… Don't say _powers, _because super-powers sounds as hokey as comic-books. Anyway, the good guys are supposed to come in and put the smack-down on all the bad guys. Then the good guys are supposed to stand there victorious as the police come in to pick up the pieces and slap handcuffs on anybody not good. Good night folks, hope you enjoyed the movie. Roll the credits.

That's not how things were going now. There were no slickster celebrities with scripted lines around to make everything seem alright. No director was there to yell _cut _when things didn't go according to plan. This wasn't a movie. This was Heather's real life.

In real life, not everyone was on Heather's side. Janice wasn't, not really. The Janitor here wasn't on her side. Even her other self wasn't on her side. Now at what point did the forces of time and space make it seem like every…single…person…was against her?

But about that Janitor guy… There was something about him. A sudden blaze of memory almost made her shout, _Hey, now I know! _Indeed, the girl had seen that kind of guy somewhere before. Now where was it? Her reach into memory was playing at the edges of something while her eye-focus returned to that guy. Come on; come on. Let's see… Circular cap with long brim, work-shirt, maybe replace the work-shoes with boots… _Hells yeah!_

…

Heather's father had an eclectic taste in the kind of reading material he gave to his daughter. Just any old parent would go with "The Three Little Bears" and "The Gingerbread Man" to supplement video-based edu-tainment from whatever big fuzzy mascot was popular on television at the time. Oh no, not Heather's father. Daddy gave Heather some _other _choice of childhood reading materials.

Little six-year-old Heather would sit there on the cushy pillow of the living-room floor of the apartment, reading the hard-covered thin texts. The illustrated volume in her lap, her little hands would hold the thick child-friendly (as in, tear-resistant) pages. Her big cute shiny eyes would take in both the words and the illustrations. Heather wasn't like other little girls her age and was able to read all the words herself. Even so, the pictures got her attention.

One of the more attention-worthy choices of reading materials given to Heather was a fairy tale about a monster. A monster in a fairy tale, big surprise there, eh? Anyway, the monster in this particular story took over the gateway of a village. It was a magical monster and therefore wasn't going to be defeated by anyone anytime soon.

What usually comes to pass with tales of that sort was that a smart individual or trio of wise-individual would go in and stop the monster--either with fancy words or some clever tricks. Ever notice how stuff in fairy tales comes in threes a lot—three magic beans, three days, three wishes, three magic attempts…? After three of something came to pass, the monster was supposed to be _owned. _Then everybody was supposed to live happily ever after.

Again, Heather's father didn't give his daughter the run-of-the-mill childhood reading material. What happened in the story that Heather read was not exactly the above-mentioned. No clever individual came to trick the beast three times into doing something stupid, like say…making the thing turn itself into a squashable cockroach or eating one of its three deadly dietary weakness in the whole wide world. So what _did _happen?

After the monster did its _I'm-evil-and-here-to-stay _intro, some of the king's men tried to come in and deal with the threat. (That's another thing. Don't those makers of fairy tales believe in anything other than monarchies? Why not try a nice little fascist state?) They tried violence, if not _ultra-_violence. _Their swords slashed and their spears flashed, _that was how the story described the soldiers putting up a fight.

But they were just gobbled up. None of their swords or spears doing much damage. The king's men tried ultra-violence on a monster and ended up being victims of ultra-violence themselves. _So much for phallic symbols of power, guys_, thought Heather now.

Next, a priestess came by and tried talking some nice words to the monster. _Heh-heh_… Whatever. The monster gobbled her up too! Poor girl didn't even the complementary three chances either.

Yet that wasn't the end of the story. With all the scientific accuracy inherent in the kinds of stories that have monsters and magic beans in them, the priestess came back to life. The scientific realism is then further emphasized with the priestess _using a magic spell _to defeat the monster at the village gate. Wham-bam, thank you ma'am. The monster was a done deal. It was a wrap, as they say in Hollywood.

Now the thing is, the words of the kiddie storybook had almost nothing for descriptions—not the people, not the awesome monster, not describing a thing, not even the color of the sky. It could be because the maker of the story didn't want to bother a young little mind with details of that sort. So, the story didn't tell what time period the village was in, didn't tell what country it was in, not even what _planet _it was.

Those illustrations in the book didn't show a typical set of villagers. In the illustrations, the villagers were dressed in a way that looked terribly modern--though the pictures themselves were simple enough for kids' eyes. Those brave guys who went in to slay the beast were dressed in a _terribly modern way_ as well. They had buttoned work-shirts worn with pants tucked into what seemed to be modern combat boots. Their style of cap looked to be something like…what do those soldier-guys call them? Soft caps? Heather only knew that because some of the mid-day businessman crowd was really big on military fiction. Those guys in the story had the same cap, the same workboots, the same rough-and-ready clothes…

In short, Heather had _seen that Janitor guy before. _If not him, the girl had seen his type …once upon a time in the pages of a fairy tale, the sort that rushed bravely to slay the beast and ended up being gobbled by the mouthful_._ _Their swords slashed and their spears flashed… _

…

2.

…

Janice's voice was as smooth as ever, but her irritation was shown with her choice of words. "Must you look so agape at someone? For one who fails to understand, your choice of actions is unwise. Listen and learn. Or are your own memories a distraction?"

"Huh?" went Heather. It wasn't exactly the smartest thing to say. After all, the words _huh _and _duh _are verbal and semantic neighbors. The sound _huh _came out of her mouth because it so happened to be the most conveniently placed word in her mind at the time. "I guess my mind was wandering." _And hopefully, I haven't lost my mind in the process…yet._

"As this professional gentleman was saying," began Janice, "he will indeed take to being our ally. We can expect no less from a Janitor. We require assistance. He in turn needs the latter. Consider it a part and parcel exchange."

Said the lean man in the maintenance-worker's uniform, "Yeah, I wouldn't have put it in so many words, but that sounds just about right." He stood up. "I'm gonna help y'all outta here. Trouble is, ya gotta tell me where ya wanna go. I just can't us on our merry way and have us end up anywhere. Ya think the view out there is bad? There are some pretty bad places where things are even worse than that."

"So what do you want from us?" asked Heather. "Some kinda driving directions? It's not like we took the bus here or anything." Sure! Hop on the nearest Greyhound for ninety-nine, ninety-five plus tax and go to any alternate reality Greyhound stops at. "It was more like a limousine we used to get here. Thing nearly fell apart all around us too." Heather noticed and felt Janice's glaring stare—but didn't care. It was the truth, wasn't it?

"Well, I want us ending up in the right place, that's for sure!" he declared. "Not to scare you or anythin' like that, but it was probably dumb luck you ended up being somewhere that didn't kill ya outright. Some worlds… They got things walkin' around that'll eat anythin' smaller than itself—to Hell with worrying about stuff bein' edible. Eat now, ask questions later, that's their hustle. Then we got places where the _air _will eat ya up, acidic vapors an' crap, if not flesh-eatin' bacteria." His words became more serious and careful, the pronunciation clear. "When you ended up _here_, you could have ended up _outside _this building instead of _inside. _Think about it."

Heather quickly twisted herself around in her seat to look at those windows over there—the view out there. Nothing was alive out there, except for things in buildings and whatever was flying those gigantic city-sized spaceships. And from the looks of things, that toxic-gray landscape and the smoke-covered sky, Heather imagined being able to survive for all of ten seconds. _No way..._

"I see I'm gettin' across to ya," said the Janitor. "Anyway, it's easy. All I've gotta do is ask some questions. To the best of your abilities, in the most accurate way possible, gimme the best answers you've got. From there, I can shoot us a good azimuth. Got me?"

"Yeah, okay," went Heather, though Heather didn't know what _shooting an_ _azimuth _meant_. _Whatever it was, it had something to do with going the right way. They definitely didn't want to end up going the _wrong _way and being somewhere else. As this girl watched the Janitor take a small thick book from his right pocket and a complicated-looking gold-colored measuring tool from his left, Heather was thinking, _Mutant-lined highway to Hell, where we come._

About the small thick book, it was thick with texts as well. The pages were in nearly microprint. If twelve-point font was normal, then that must be about one-twelfth font or something. The letters in the thing must require magnifying glasses for most people to see. That, and there must be at least nine hundred pages to the thing... Yet the Janitor was going to use that small compact book with just his bare eyes.

With that small booklet in his right hand and a complicated-looking measuring tool in his left, he began. "Alright. We're gonna find out about our destination. What's it look like? Terrestrial?"

"Like…Earth, you mean? Yeah, I guess it was," responded Heather. _Terrestrial, _that was another one of those words introduced to her by inquiring customers. But instead of those Tom Clancy hero, Solid Snake-thinking military wanna-be's, the word _terrestrial _was from those slump-shouldered, glasses-wearing sci-fi customers who were all into those space-opera novels. Most of them were too shy to even make eye-contact with her. More exactly true was how they were too shy to make eye contact with..._girls_. Beyond studying to keep up their high grade-point averages at school and immersing themselves in sci-fi tales through books and computer games, _real _life could be a bother. Real life for some of those troubled but hard-working young souls also meant dealing with _real _girls. The fact that Heather was _very_ cute didn't help things.

However, in introducing her to that word they had helped Heather in just that one way. No doubt, those sorts of customers leading her to finding out other sci-fi terms and ideas helped as well. Never mind that Heather was more into reading things on the supernatural.

"Uh-huh, terrestrial," agreed the Janitor. "At least a place that looks like a place you'd think was Earth," continued the Janitor. "Some people end up screwball places and start thinkin', this _can't _be Earth. But I can't rightly say those places are all really Earth."

"Funny you should say that," interjected Heather. Now her thoughts were steering towards the appearance of things outside the hospital. "The sky there was this funny orange-reddish color. It was like the sun was dying and stuff." _Dying daylight in a dying world._

The Janitor paused, going through a burst of mental arithmetic. "Sky's leanin' towards red tones, huh? Yeah... _Yeah!_ That helps a lot." He flipped through pages like mad, the thumb of his right hand blurring and flickering pretty darned fast. A person would have thought that the Janitor had some kind of inhuman abilities himself—at least in his hands. "It's not good news at all, mind ya, but it's still a _big _help." He took that small gold-colored tool and applied it to a corner of the page. "Terrestrial, familiar-looking, red tones…" he mused aloud. "Meaning, _they _are in the staging phases of taking over."

Thought Heather, _Take over? Sounds like some kinda invasion. _Alien invasions, now that was another thing for the slump-shoulders-and-eyeglasses crowd. Geeky or not, an actual invasion was pretty darned scary when one actually saw the results. That, and even the idea of _them _being from another planet would be more familiar and comforting than some inhuman beings from...somewhere else. A thought of what Heather's father once said came to mind. _It's being taken over by the Other world... _Capital _O, _because the concept of _Other _was pretty important just like how the capital _J _in _Janitor was important_.

"Got it," said the Janitor. "If you think it's familiar and all that, I know we've got enough info to get there. We can't end up exactly on the button, but we'll get close. Now let's get to our means of gettin' there. A little bit dangerous, but it's gotta be done."


	12. Chapter 12

--Woo-hoo

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 12

…

1.

…

Later, they were standing in the extra machine room next door to the first one… It even looked pretty much like the first one. Everything was in just as good shape, clean and in fully working order. The only difference between this room and the other room was that none of the Janitor's workers were here. Workers or monsters, Heather still couldn't help but think of those guys as being monsters no matter how well-behaved they were.

Were they really monsters? Deformed and altered as they were, they hadn't raised a hand to Heather. Yeah, and most of them had more than just a set of hands too…and more than one set of arms, and eyes, and legs. The last time Heather was in a situation like this, anything not resembling a real-deal human being was fair game for any means of killing available: be it a switchblade, a stray pistol or (everybody's favorite standby) a bit of rusty pipe that so happened to be lying around.

Not anymore, though. Heather stared at the door separating this machine-room from the other one. That was where those…_things _worked at the machine. Went a thought, _Can't go around bludgeoning everything that moves, can we?_

Janice's deceptively sweet voice gently interrupted her contemplations. "You seem confused. Perhaps if you allowed your narrow perceptions to widen, confusion would not be so easily had, hmm?"

Heather was about to say something saucy about having Janice go widen something else, but the Janitor chose that very second to walk into here from the other machine-room. The brief amount of time he had the door open, one could hear the machine thrumming and have a glimpse of those creatures in coveralls doing their thing. Thank goodness that door closed again.

"Alright, I done talked to my people workin' the machine," he told the girls. "They know what to do while I'm gone. They've been going it long enough to not need too much supervision at this point anyway. Say, y'all two won't need much in the way of firearms, will ya? Nah? I figured. You're the sort that don't need 'em."

Thought Heather to herself, _Great… First, psycho Goth-girl here drags me into this. Now this Mop-Bucket Mastermind is coming along for the fun! _Two's company, three's a crowd, but there was probably more than that if Janice's unseen servants counted. Her servants could be two or two hundred—just waiting to step in whenever their mistress. Now they had somebody completely different joining up with them. It was a Janitor. A janitor, for goodness' sakes! The guy was a scrub-brush supreme, a master of the mop, a warrior of window-wiping, a king of cleanliness bling...

The Janitor stepped close to where Heather so happened to be standing. "Pardon me, girl," he said. "I need ya to step aside for just about a minute."

Looking more than a little irritated, Heather did step aside and made that _be my guest _gesture with both hands. Then Heather watched as the Janitor knelt down. What the Hell was that wrench-wrangler up to this time?

He was doing something to a panel on the floor. No, Heather wasn't stupidly standing on the thing. It was just that the panel _wasn't there before. _It'd take a magician to pull a trick like that, making that panel come out of nowhere. Did they teach that sort of stunt at Janitor's school or wherever?

Said the Janitor, "Y'all just might wanna sit down for this one, 'cause it might be just a little bit uncomfortable. I'm gonna open it, and ya might not like what happens after that..."

"Jeez!" exclaimed Heather, flopping her hands in exasperation. "It's just a freakin' panel! What, will a gazillion buzzing little bat-monsters come flying out to poke us in the face or something? Or do you have a year's used supply of dirty socks stashed down there? It's not like the grand opening of a supermarket or some crap, _so just open the thing already!_"

The Janitor gave a look to Janice. It was the kind of look that meant, _You actually put up with this kid? _"Alright. What the young lady wants, the young lady gets!" He laid himself down flat against the floor and turned his head away. Then..._yoink!_ He gave that panel a pull to expose a square of darkness, it being…_the darkness being darker than the universe. _

_It was like he gave the whole damned room a yank too. Everything was going to a side and down into that deep darkness. Heather felt herself falling through that darkness, looking up (or was it sideways) at the square of white that was the opening. Heather also had the notion that everyone else was falling into this void with her. The girl had the vague hope of not going _splat _or breaking her neck when they hit the bottom. This was of course assuming there was a bottom. If not, if there was such a thing as bottomless pits, people wouldn't die from the fall. They would die of thirst. _

...

_Lo and behold, there was some kind of bottom to their fall even if it was not exactly down in the traditional sense. Something big and red was standing on the floor, more with darkness behind it. Maybe it had a gigantic head atop a broad torso, maybe two gigantic arms and two mighty legs. Maybe it had a set of something coming out the back… Whatever it was, the big red entity stood there with malicious intent. The thing didn't talk, didn't gesture. It just…stared, the hatred coming from it enough to communicate its intents. _

_Heather was only too aware of just lying here, on her back and not being able to move, not even a little bit. But her eyes were very much open and able to take in albeit blurry sight of the big red entity. Would things have been better if Heather's eyes were closed? Hells no… Only little kids believed that hiding one's eyes behind closed eyelids or behind covers would make the bad things go away. _

_Not this time, baby. Even if Heather could close her eyes, the thing's hatred would still be there. The entity itself would still be there. That big entity wasn't about to go away any time soon for a round of golf or a bite to eat at a fine restaurant, or whatever in tarnation that trans-dimensional entities do for kicks. _

_Or maybe, this was their fun—making life Hell for everyday folks. Making people hear voices in empty rooms, causing objects to move on their own, causing glimpses of creatures that ought not exist…yep, that sounds about right. Things like that probably wait for people to be completely alone late at night before making those sorts of things happen. That way, it'll seem as if the only people who end up being taunted seem crazy! Then nobody can help their scared asses! Even better, find a way to make some of those creatures become as real as radios—even if its only on a temporary basis, even if only in places where the barriers between worlds is particularly thin. _

_Sure, bitch! We're gonna invade some alternate universe! And it's gonna be _your _universe! Wa-hey, why not! We've got nothing better to do for all of eternity in the Void. Give 'er the old college try. What've we got to lose, our lives? Hah! What's the fork is life when we're not even alive to begin with? _

_As the numbness began to fade, Heather began to sit up as the big red entity walked…or floated…away. Her eyes…_adjusted to see that they were in _this _kind of place again.

It was a dark, gritty metal room. The only source of light here was a blood-colored incandescent bulb in a grimy glass casing, which made all the nastiness of this place look even nastier. This was like an opposite version of the Janitor's machine place. While the Janitor's workplace was all clean and brightly lit, everything here looked all dark and gritty, rusty and nasty. The girl looked down at the surface beneath her jeans-covered butt and her bare palms. Beneath her was a gappy floor of metal plates bolted to a reddish rusted grating. Lots of those metal plates were missing to expose the thin bars of rusty metal grating beneath. A person could see through the grating to look at the infinite darkness below… "Oh no," was her lament. "Please not here again."

To her left, the Janitor audibly inhaled through his nose like somebody waking up from a good night's sleep. He pushed himself to his feet in standing. Even if there was a definite wobble in his balance, the guy was nevertheless on his fee. That wobble was in his voice as well. "Yup, it…uh, figures," he said. "Fancy meeting us in a place like this, huh? _Heh-heh-heh…_"

Heather got up to stand with hands on jeans-covered hips. "_Heh-heh_ yourself," was her reply. "I don't think we needed your help to end up here, even if _here _isn't really anywhere. Now where'd Janice…?" A not-so-nice smile came to Heather's lips. If Janice was lost, then there wouldn't be any good reason to go on this trip. Just go on home as if nothing the Hell was happening. Good. Now there'd be no more threats of being strangled or slapped for no good reason.

"You two certainly took your time in coming about," said a certain delicious female voice from a darkened corner—a voice sweet as apples in wine, with perhaps a distant but definite hint of arsenic… Having verbally revealed her presence, Janice made her approach. Her boot-heels clicked audibly on the grating, exquisite bare thighs extending beneath a black leather dress, black jacket flowing outward and behind from her body, head of long dark hair also in the flow.

_Speak of the devil, _thought Heather. Saying, "Okay, we've got the band back together again. Now what? Now I'm feeling a little bit lost. Janice, why can't _you _help point the way for once? You got this party started in the first place."

"_I _was the one?" asked Janice innocently. "As if that was so! You are the one to blame, doing that which should not be done, introducing an element of disorder into my domain. It was necessity that brought me to you, the necessity of restoring order from slow-seeping chaos. You are the one to navigate through a place of lost chaos."

Heather _stomped _her right foot on the metal grating—which didn't quite produce the right effect in that sneakers were on her feet instead of boots. "It's _my _fault? Whatever! You're _always _saying its my fault. So help me, if you blame me just _one _more time, I'll shove my right sneaker so far up your butt you'll taste latex rubber! You just…!"

Janice was not looking at Heather but past her, big dark goth-girl eyes going wide open—looking past the blonde-haired girl who was going to have yet another anger-driven rant. There was not going to be any emotional nuclear event at the moment, however. Another kind of event was coming to pass. A person could not rightly see it with their eyes, more like seeing it…_with their minds. _

…

_This darkened place had machines as well—machines in other rooms. Such were large machines in square rooms that were illuminated with blood-colored light. The Janitor had machines that served one kind of purpose. The something lurched and churned in the darkness served another. Goodness gracious, look out…because they were getting ready to do their thing. Yes-sir-ee-Bob…_

_Rattling chunky sounds shuddered out from the thick metal casing of the strange machine as thick sloshing sounded through attached pipes. The machine had pipes and thick electrical cables, see. Electricity flows through the thick cables. As for what flows through the pipes, well…everybody knows what kind of liquid is thick, red and has a slight metallic tang to it._

_The fluid that was the delight of vampires everywhere was sloshing and slurping through the pipes that led to the strange machine that churned and rattled in the red-lit room. Noise began to increase as that thing was gearing up to get some even more serious business done. Every so often, one could hear a growl from within its depths. Something moaned. Something was coming…_

…

"What's up with ya?" asked the Janitor, looking at the girls looking past one another. "One minute, you two are goin' at it like a married couple and…" _Wh-h-hoo-o. _"That the Hell was that!" he yelled. And before he completed that last exclamation, that blocky pistol of his was already in his right hand. "Hole-e-e crap on a cracker! Shoulda known it wasn't gonna be an easy stroll. Now look. One of _them _is comin' for us."

Another _moan _sounded out from the metal walls. Since it was so dimly lit in here, it was pretty darned hard to tell from where the sound was coming. It could even be coming…from the floor. In fact, one particularly interesting part of the floor in the corner had quite an oddly spaced piece of grating—opening into the depths of this place, its growling depths of strange machinery and lost darkness.

A gray, dark-veined left hand reached through the grating to grip the floor. That's right. Everybody knows that ghosts and stuff can go through walls. So, why not be able to go through the floor—_through _the grating? That hand was followed by another gray, dark-veined hand. Both hands were attached to sleeved arms. The hands reached out farther to get a grip elsewhere on the grating, getting a better grip farther into this room. Now those arms went to work in pulling the rest of the figure up and into this room. There it stood in workshirt and coveralls, work-shoes on its feet. It was one of those not-living things. It also looked a Hell of a lot like somebody else.

Heather looked at the darkened figure over there, then looked at the Janitor, looked back at the darkened figure. _No way, _thought the girl. _What the fork is this, some kinda Star-Wars clones crap? _"How is that guy looking like you!" went her shout.

"It ain't me!" exclaimed the Janitor. "It ain't me!" he said again before his pistol did the rest of the talking for him. He took aim and squeezed the trigger more carefully than usual. The high sharp sound of the pistol-shot in this room obliterated any semblance of auditory peace. Now the action was on.

That thing across the way shook once. On the metal wall behind it was dark fluid that had sprayed from the exit wound. More dark fluid dribbled to the grating beneath. Good old training, always telling somebody to aim for center of mass when firing on the enemy. Too bad the enemy here wasn't one's typical opposition.

Heather thought to herself, _Why can't people learn to shoot monsters in the head? For that matter, why didn't _I _ever start learning to shoot monsters in the head? _"Get a headshot!" shouted Heather. "_Blow its freakin' block off!_"

So the Janitor did, or he tried. His pistol sounded out once more. Over there, the darkened figure's head snapped back when it caught a round in the forehead, another splotch from the exit wound adding to the mess on the metal of the wall behind it. The Janitor wasn't going to be all stupid and wait for the darkened figure to recover, so he shot again—the bullet having snapped through the chin and out the top of the noggin. More liquid darkness spattered the wall. Well, that's one way to make the paint job a tad bit more interesting.

The darkened figure teetered there, maybe not quite sure of what to do when shot once in the torso and twice in the head. A person was supposed to _die, _that's what! That would be so if the thing was alive in the first place—alive, as understood by some accounts. The thing wasn't alive in the so-called normal sense and hadn't been for a good long time. Still, it could at least do everybody the courtesy of falling over.

So it fell over at least. There it laid. Gurgle-choking sounds came from its mouth and from the newly introduced gap in its chest cavity. Damned thing was quite lively for something not alive. In fact, it looked set to resting a bit just before getting up to be lively some more.

Back over here, the Janitor wasn't looking too good himself. He was hunkered over and had his left hand to his head. "_Nnnngh…!_ _Jeez-Louise!_" he grunted. "_Damned thing's in my head! How…?_" He was still holding his weapon in a tight grip, not dropping it or accidentally squeezing the trigger.

Janice's voice was a surprisingly delicious sound in this moment of ultra-violence. "Dearest sister, this is a capital opportunity to use your abilities. This is largely assuming, of course, that you retained the hard-won knowledge to do so. Do you?"

Heather stared at the darkened figure lying on the floor across the way. _I'll show you, _went her thought. _I can be better than you at using abilities! _Her thoughts went a certain way. A _flash _of bright redness blasted through the darkness, forked brightness that lanced through her target.

The Janitor saw it through his headache-lanced mind. He saw it and didn't quite believe it. Never mind how he wasn't seeing much of anything at the moment. The flashing brightness had temporarily blinded him. Nevertheless, the results of that bright flash were appreciable. That darkened figure over there had become _really _darkened now. It now looked something like cooked meat that was man-shaped and dressed in work-clothes. It wasn't moving for a while. Then it moved in a hurry. The damned thing whipped itself around to go chest-down, and then—with a sound of clattering fingers and crackling burnt flesh—it scrambled back through the floor.

"Let's get out of here," said Heather, acting as if the results were exactly expected. "More of those things could be back any second, and I don't feel like dealing with them." Then the girl looked for the door out.

…

2.

…

Heather expected another one of those long halls but instead found another room. The first thing noticed was the glow from beyond the floor grating…and the heat. This hexagonally shaped room had nothing but that thin-bar grating which seemed to be the biggest architectural trend hereabouts—no metal plates at all. Thin metal bars made for a crosshatching at one's feet, through which one could see what was beneath. Fire was beneath, lighting up this place with a low orange glow that was nevertheless very hot. At the center of the room was a thing that looked like an electric furnace designed by someone who spent too much time listening to death-metal rock bands. It was a floor-to-ceiling affair about wide as four people standing together, a square metal thing that looked made out of burnt steel, two sides of it opened with exposed electrical cables and electromechanical components covered with black spikes. Red-glowing dials displayed some kind of information that must have been interpretable to whatever beings designed the thing. That thing was not the main attraction, though.

Why install a furnace when there was a damned _fire _beneath this room? Heather felt her vision blur over from just looking at it and was even starting to feel a little sick. Maybe it was just the heat alone, feeling…_so sick.._.

"Hey! Snap outta it!" yelled the Janitor. "Can't stay here long. Don't ya know this room is fulla bad _radiation? _Ionizin' _radiation _here's probably done already shortened our lifespans by 'bout twenty years already. And it'll lop off probably another twenty years more if we stay here for another few minutes! Let's…_go!_"

The Janitor said…_radiation. _Heather wasn't up on much science-learning herself, but the word _radiation _was a bad word in every layperson's vocabulary. The good kinds of radiation—at least the electromagnetic kind—are the sorts that come in the low-frequency and low-intensity ranges used to send pretty music to stereo systems and shining down from the big bright thing in the daytime sky. Most folks don't hear about that kind of radiation from news-casters and ads for summer blockbuster war-disaster movies.

Oh no, everybody hears about _radiation _that comes from the cracked domes of nuclear reactors and potential nukes of World War Triple-I before Mister Super Action-Hero Man comes along to shoot up the bad guys, patch everything up, avert world-wide disaster and kiss the girl at the end. But some kinds of _radiation _are just plain bad news to multi-cellular organisms. Add _nuclear _to radiation and one gets more than one can bargain for—beta-rays, gamma rays, and all kinds of subatomic crap added to the mix. Those would be the sorts of fun stuff that came out of _nuclear _explosions and the naked cores of nuclear reactors.

Too bad this was not the friendly kind of radiation. Heather was scared. Hell, who wouldn't be? Unseen and invisible, the bad kinds of _radiation _killed eventually and silently.

"Does the child wish to slumber again?" asked Janice, cool as ever. "Feel free to succumb to temptations of oblivion and the Void. In the meanwhile, that man and I shall do what is necessary."

That Janice… Somehow, that pale girl in black was as cold as ever. A person would presume that wearing a tight black-leather dress and having a jacket thrown over for good measure would be suffocating and insulating in this heat, regardless of how short it was at the thighs. Perhaps the clothing actually shielded against heat. Or perhaps something about Janice and her cool milk-white flesh simply remained unaffected.

Janice started walking away. Heather quickly felt the heat getting a lot more heated. It was just maybe a good idea to stay close to Janice, then. Something about her was sucking up the burning hotness as easily as sucking down icy wine coolers on hot days in a Southern place. Being close to her also made this situation feel weird—all of that fire below and suddenly being able to feel coolly comfortable.

Standing close to the demonic-looking furnace-machine, the Janitor readjusted the cap on his head. He was already at one side of the open thing. "This nasty thing's our ticket outta here, believe it or not," he declared. "Just gotta keep from gettin' poked by those electrostatic discharge displacers when we calibrate by way of our known azimuth."

"Displacers…? You mean those spikey things?" asked Heather, looking at the machine instead. Looking at the machine was better than looking at the sight beyond the floor-grating, trying not to look down there. Looking down there started making her see things in the orange fire.

Come to think of it, Heather thought some of those flames looked like floating, twisted phantasmal limbs. Some of the shapes also looked like faces. Sounds came from below to match the perception, whispers from the fluttering heated air from the inferno. _Come hither, Heather… Come down to sleep and dream with us. Come join…the fire! _

_Hells no, _thought Heather, shaking her head. "Can I do anything to help?" asked the girl. "The sooner we're out of here, the better."

"If ya can identify an electrostatic discharge displacer, that's qualification enough," said the Janitor. "I want ya to look real carefully an' locate the primary analog calibrator. Looks like a combination padlock twist dial—only it's got about a million-million notches on it."

Heather found it on the other panel of the furnace-looking machine alright, a dial that that was actually eye-level to her. Luckily for her was how there really wasn't a million-million notches on it. Maybe it only looked as if there were just a million. "Found it," was her response.

"Good," went the Janitor. A pause, he was consulting the dial readouts on his side. "Now very, very carefully, I want that thing turned eighteen clicks to your left. Counter-clockwise, got me? Ya can feel the thing go through every click. Believe me when I say that, so be very careful."

"Basically, you want me to be careful," said Heather, bringing fingers to the dial and quickly pulled back. "_Jeez!_" The damned thing was _hot. _Whipping her fingers in the air, the girl said, "You could've _warned _me thing'd be hot!" was her complaint. Fortunately for her was how it was not so hot that it burnt her fingers on contact. Some objects can become so hot that they burn fingers and nerves out in an instant, leaving a person unable to feel the injury until the dead fingertips blackened later. Bad _radiation _was like that, not giving the pain unto death until later.

The Janitor didn't respond. _Jerk… _Well, short of not having oven mitts, the only other thing for Heather to do was use something that insulates. Her socks? No way. That was just gross. They were fresh socks and all put on this morning, and Heather _did _shower twice a day and _did _use that spray-stuff on her sneaker insoles. But still, just the thought of it was like, _ew_. Then Heather remembered having something that was thick and cloth-like available for use. (No, it wasn't a spare tampon. It wasn't that time of the month for her anyway.) Reaching into her left pocket, the girl pulled out a small folded selection of single dollars—usually used for bus fare.

The girl coiled several of the things around the metal of the dial, using the thick currency as an insulator. _Good old legal tender, good for all debts public and private, along with wrangling analog calibration dials in Hell, _thought the girl. Though the dial was still hot to the touch through the dollars, it was not painfully so. Now to turn... One click, and everything _wrenched to the left_ as if this whole place was rigged to a tilt-a-whirl ride_. _"Whoa…!"

"Now _that _I warned ya about," said the Janitor. "Come on. According to this, we've got five more clicks to get through. Do 'em quick."

That's right. He wants to make it quick _and _careful. Heather was starting to not like the Janitor. _Freakin' mop-bucket brigadier, _thought the girl in clicking the thing five more times…_just as the dizziness started becoming too much. Whoever knew that counting to five could be such a hassle? And on the count of five, Heather felt herself get yanked away…_


	13. Chapter 13

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection (by Elliot Bowers) Chapter 13

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

"Walking on Air"

music and vocals by Kerli

Chapter 13

…

1.

…

_It was not the dubious comfort of the hospital mattress which greeted Heather…_upon her waking up here, which was the hospital anyway—mattress or no mattress. This time, Heather was left on the floor. _At least those jack-holes left the light on this time, _thought the dark-haired girl.

Having the light on was necessary because it was dark out—truly nightfall. The windows were squares of darkness with nothing outside. Inside, the florescent-lit hospital-prison room was more of the same crumbling glory it always was—all the furniture being hard and metal save the cushion of the bed, the floor being hard tiles, hard walls with some cracked and missing tiles. Funny, all the bad jokes Heather heard of places for crazy people were ones about the walls being soft.

Sitting here, Heather's left hand brushed something warm and elastic. Vaguely confused, Heather reached out to touch it again. There it was again. Her mind puzzled out what the thing very well could be while something touched one of her bare thighs.

"_Whoah-h-h!_" went her exclamation as suddenly one of them slipped beneath her hospital gown, slipped greasily around to her abdomen and slipped 'round back. Oh yeah, they left the light on…as so Heather could see what the Hell was trying to get her!

Thosecat-sized slug-things were attached to her body, under her clothes, one of them on her left leg_. _And this time, they weren't even trying to seduce her—the hot tingling sensation of poisons interacting with her nervous system, the creeping numbness that seeped through the skin of her back and approaching her spinal cord. This was the bio-chemical equivalent of rape.

Heather, legally an adult, probably never sounded more like a little girl than in that moment. The girl started shrieking and stomping her feet all over the place, waving her arms all around and making a general cacophony of verbal chaos. It was her being absolutely lost in the total nasty _grossness _of the situation. The things on her were all nasty and warm and slimy and _the girl didn't want them on her anymore!_

The parasitic creatures realized that their potential host wasn't showing all the calm hospitality they expected. (Heh-heh, hospitality…) They increased their secretions. That pre-numbness tingling began to feel like _burning. _

It didn't work on Heather, of course. The girl slapped the slug-thing off of her left thigh. Not even mindful of anything like modesty, off came her single hospital garment, leaving her naked save the creatures on her body. One of the football-sized things was firmly attached to her abdomen while the other one still trying to molest her spinal cord.

Heather slapped that one off of her abdomen easily enough. Using a gesture reminiscent of unfastening a brassiere, the girl reached back and somehow managed to locate the little forker's head. A _pinch, _much like the pressing of a brassiere's fastener, and the thing's noggin burst like a plum. Its body dropped off.

Now comes the fun part. A grand total of three slug-things were on the floor and still ready to rock. Meaning, they were still in good enough condition to cause a naked girl some real trouble. That certain naked girl wasn't going to be having it.

What followed was the sound of slugs being squashed, which sounded exactly as expected. A near-equivalent would be stepping on a jam-filled balloon made of sewed-together pieces of baloney. That sound came out again and again every time her right foot came up…and came down _hard. _Wet darkness went spattering outward from each squashed slug-thing. It was too easy as those things weren't too fast. The last one was still squirming and grooving along as if it had a serious chance of getting some hot Heather action tonight. It would get some _action _alright—action in the form of a bare foot coming down on its horny invertebrate ass. Heather stomped those pricks _flat_.

Then it was over… Standing there, the girl looked at what was on the floor around her feet. Those things once resembled footballs. Now they looked like _flattened _footballs. The dark oily fluid they had inside was now outside, mixed in with stringy things that must have been their guts. As for the one that had once been on her back, some of that stuff must have been the brains. Guts, brains, ichor, it was all mixed up into one big puddle around her, one big happy and nasty soup.

Very carefully, Heather stepped her way out of the puddling ichor at her feet even as the stuff was already rapidly drying. Her one item of clothing in this place was just a few steps away and was somehow spared the brunt of the liquid assault. Using her left hand, the girl reached for her own back to try wiping away some traces of the sliminess. The girl did the same for her left thigh and abdomen. The stuff dries up fast. Only after being sure of her own body being free from the slime of the slug-thing's trails did Heather put back on the hospital garment, no longer being the naked screaming person of a prolonged moment ago.

Good… Now Heather could have herself a nice long screaming fit. What came out of her was an inarticulate and open-ended sound of intense and angry rage mixed with craziness. When her lungs were out of air, the girl inhaled and started right back up again. That wasn't good enough somehow, so the girl went over to the wall and started pounding the thing with the bottoms of her crazy and angry fists. And the girl was still screaming. Screaming and pounding, angry and loud, it was her just letting it all out it out.

The girl was also still not in the best of physical condition. After all, the food in this place was just _terrible. _Half the stuff wasn't even edible at all—looking more like laboratory specimens from a spacey sci-fi flick than stuff fit for human consumption. Her days and nights were generally sleepless. So weakened, the girl sat herself down and with her back against the wall. This was Heather with her back to the wall in more ways than one. Yet some hard and bitter core of resistance stayed within her.

"I'm not going to let you win," said Heather to the unseen presence. "You got everybody else, but you're not going to get _me. _I'm gonna find out how to get you. And when I do…"

_Blink-flicker! _The lights did that thing again. Since those lights were the only source of illumination, with no light outside in the night, it was as if Heather's sight flickered with milliseconds of blindness. It was as if the unseen presence was reminding the girl of who was boss around here. You'd better that temper of yours, young lady, or I'll send you to bed with no supper!

Hah, as if the supper hereabouts was worth it anyway. Forget about hundred-dollar weight-loss pills and thousand-dollar health-club memberships. If a person wanted to lose weight, _this _was the place. Just mentally brush aside notions of little things like pornographic slug-creatures and psychotic nurse-monsters, and one will get along just fine. 

_Flickety-flicker… _The lights did that thing again. This time, they returned at only half the brightness. Then Heather heard the low electric-buzzing sound of the light fixtures operating with reduced power. It was like back at the apartment when the bad wiring would go on the fritz on particularly hot days. Thanks to global warming, the thinning ozone layer and all other stuff that millionaire politicians used to say didn't exist (but ninety-nine percent of the world's scientists _did _say existed), the days were especially hot in the city. Record-breaking temperatures stayed on more and more often with every summer and every year. And when things get hot, people want to get cold. Crank up the air conditioners! Turn on those damned useless massage-chairs for the executives at the mall during lunch hour! And at home, let the oldsters turn on their great big inefficient electricity-gobbling ancient vacuum-tube televisions all at the same time—sitting in bed and watching pornoes on their VCRs.

This dimming of lights wasn't thanks to the beer-swilling, pot-bellied porno-obsessed perverts from other floors of the apartment building, though. (Whenever they saw her in the hall, they always leered at her as if trying to find out what her body looked like underneath her clothes. Ick.) No-sir-ee, those pervs were in a galaxy far, far away compared to this place. Or maybe not. Maybe the unseen presence employed the cross-dimensional equivalent of pot-bellied perverts to at least do _something _on another floor of this hospital-prison place. Maybe the unseen presence had a hundred pot-bellied creatures in wifebeater tops and boxer-shorts sitting in front of a hundred visual devices from Dimension X or from thirty-thousand years into the future or some crap and had them all watching _Debbie-tron Does Planet Dallas, _all of them brought here just to suck juice out of the lights. Who the Hell knows?

"Pervs," muttered Heather aloud. With the only other sound here being the buzzing of the short-circuited lights, it did sound pretty loud. _Flickety-flicker_ went the lights once more. Such language, young lady! _Whatever. Keep doing that. Forking jerk…_

_Flick-flicker! Bzz-z-z… _Now the lights went a touch bit dimmer, the illumination fluttering as if on its last electrical legs. The reduced lighting made seeing the glowing letters on the wall all the more visible.

The entire wall opposite Heather was now absolutely covered with glowing words. And when stuff glows in the dark, the first color coming to mind would be the color green—which was _exactly _the color of light given off. Those letters weren't glowing with the nice soft tones of gentle, kid-friendly toys bought from fifty-cent vending machines at supermarket. No doubt more than a few baby-cousins swallowed those things with no ill effect. Oh, not at all was that the case. Those words were glowing with the shimmering intensity of _radioactivity_, the bad kind of radioactivity, like with radium or what leaked out of nuclear reactors gone wrong. Forget about _Girls Gone Wild. _Try _Containment Cores Gone Wild. _

Heather turned her eyes away and stopped looking at the writing. Even then, the letters left a troubling after-image. When that stuff glows, it wasn't kidding. It was going to make its presence thoroughly known to any and all organs of sight. Never mind how obnoxious it was in doing so.

What _about _the words? Were the words from Heather's current native language, that of English? Nope… Were they in Japanese? Nope. The words weren't written in _kanji, hiragana _or even _katakana._ How about…Swahili? No, nope, and nope-a-roo, kangaroo! And forget about asking if the writing was Abanyom, Badeshi, Cantonese, Dahlik, Eastern Yugor, or even that near-extinct language mentioned in the _Guinness Book of World Records _that was so rare that only one guy in the world was left who spoke it before he died. What the Hell was that language called again? Ubisoft? Ubu-bubba? Whatever… It sounded crazy and off-the-wall—which was probably appropriate for a fact from a record-keeping organization that was named after a beer brewery….

Ubykh! _That's _what it was. Yes! Ubykh was the world's rarest language—least in one world. But not even that was the language written on the walls in nasty glowing green radiation-superhero letters. The language written on the wall wasn't even from this world or even from this dimension at all. It was, however, as close to interpretable to human eyes as that language could get.

And with her biologically human eyes, Heather could read that language. Heather also knew that the writer of the message wanted to know her in the biblical sense. Only a glimpse at the words was enough—the language being so deeply ingrained within her and so automatic that a glance was all it took. Suffice to say that the thing wasn't exactly in polite flowery prose. If there really were trans-dimensional perverts on another floor of this hospital place with electricity-gobbling appliances, they must have had a hand in the composition.

"Neat trick," said the girl aloud. "It almost beats all of those damned other tricks you keep trying that _don't work on me!_"

Some machinery somewhere beneath the floor made a long deep rattling sound. It sounded suspiciously like that of something alive. If that wasn't bad enough, something behind one of the walls gave a laugh.

It wasn't a good laugh. Laughing, that was for good times with good people, when everything was going fine and things weren't too bad. How long had it been since Heather heard a nice, honest laugh? It was just too long. Once upon a time, things were better…

...

2.

…

_Somewhere else, something else was happening in a dimly lit place. There were things in this place—things like a certain desk and a certain little pocket-radio, the little radio atop the desk. (Because, if the desk was atop the radio, it wouldn't make any noise anymore, would it?) Hissing from a speaker, dim shadowy gloom everywhere, that could only mean one thing… Yes indeed! This was a moment that needs no introduction but is getting one anyway. Behold and welcome to another Silent Hill Radio Moment._

_That static hissing from the radio began to go down just a notch. It lowered enough as so one could hear the beginnings of a rather cutesy and catchy sound of instrumentals, an occasional clap to match the beat—among the instrumentals being what sounded like a toy piano. A girl-woman's voice began singing in, starting playfully before becoming sad and wistful. La-la, la…la-la… _

_La-la-la! La-la-la._

_There's a little creepy house in a little creepy place!_

_Little creepy town_

_in a little creepy world._

_Little creepy girl with her little creepy face_

_Saying things that you've ne-e-ever heard…_

_Do you know what it's a-a-all about? _

_Are you brave enough to fi-i-igure out? _

_Know that you could set your world on fire!_

_If you're strong enough to leave your doubt…_

_Then the radio cut out the song with hissing, just like that. If one wanted to hear more of the song, a person could try something so silly as calling the station responsible. Be prepared to pay some hefty long-distance charges too, because the place responsible for the broadcast wasn't even in this universe—if in any universe. _

…

Back in the hospital place, Heather was just sitting there. Her legs were straight out, back against the wall again, her arms and hands carelessly by her sides. Head tilted, her neck was as relaxed as her other limbs. Perhaps the only real voluntary muscles doing any work at the moment would be the ones rotating her eyes—those lost hazel eyes regarding the barred window and what was beyond. It was dark outside, nothing much to see for someone who wasn't really looking.

While her eyes were staring at that darkness, her mind was beginning to wander and wonder. About what? Well, her mind was wandering and wondering about a lot of things. How the _Hell _did things get to be so bad for her and bad for everybody? It could be just this town alone ending up this way, but Heather doubted that hopeful thought. Her vantage point gave the visual and perceptual impression that the world was a done deal. Be it that eerie low-glow orange of the dying day, the long and drawn-out sunset or even the too-long stretches of night, this girl was just thinking that everything was getting to be like this. First this hospital, then the town, and then the change must have started going everywhere—a rotting, reality-twisting change that made everything go down and wrong.

They got her Dad. He used to be such a nice guy. Even when he was probably really, _really _pissed off at something that Heather could have done at the moment, he had this even-toned voice that could only come from somebody who was a good person. What's a little vandalism? How about a little shoplifting? It's all a little experimentation, is all—sort of like experiments in chemistry. Make that _biochemistry _and call the experiment, The Effects of Nicotine and Carbon Monoxide Upon the Physical Development of a Female.

Heather got herself right as her late teens began to approach. There was no more time to be joking and fooling around. Her part-time job was getting to be more important in her life as Dad expected her to front a little more money for the apartment's bills. After the age of eighteen, a girl can't expect to get off with just a week-long trip to the city's juvie hall or with special social programs for at-risk teenagers. That hyper-merry-go-round craziness of youth just had to go.

So why did Dad have to go ahead and dump her in a _dump _like this? _It's for your own good, _was his insistence. _For your own good _was a cliché. Dad was a writer, and writers aren't supposed to use clichés, but there you go anyway. In saying that, Dad was being less a writer and more a father. So here Heather was, and there went Dad—living out there in the world and ending up _not-living _when they got him, taking him over and making her kill him.

They got Dad and changed him. They most likely got everybody else. Then they began to darken the town, making the sun dim somehow…or taking the town into a place where the sun was like that anyway. The unseen presence took the hospital into this world easily enough, so taking a whole town ought to be as easy as eating Satanic cake.

Heather thought about what the city looked like in the light of the dying day and what it looked like before. Daytime, the sun being that low sunset-toned orange color, it made the rotting concrete and rusting metal fixtures of the downtown landscape look even worse…things getting worse. It was night, and everything was in sheer blackness, but that didn't change the fundamental reality of it all. Come the return of daylight in all its dying orange glory, everything in town would still look the nasty way it was before, getting nastier bit by rusty bit, crack by crumbling crack. So thinking, so lulled in memories and mental meanderings that the girl was doubly shocked when an explosive blast of sound came from the direction of the metal doorway.

It was the hospital-room door itself. The door did not really explode, yet it was struck open with force enough to make one think so. Standing in the open threshold now was something that was responsible for that racket. And from the looks of its very exposed and very male genitalia, it looked ready to be responsible for impregnating anything female in sight.

Of course the creature had other physical features besides its set of…ah, male equipment. It was generally human-like. Meaning, huge the thing had a torso with two arms and two legs, a head atop it. Human-like does _not _mean human. It had no neck, for one—its head looking more like a flesh-dome above a set of lesion-riddled shoulders. In fact all of its skin was a mess of weeping sores. As a concession to what could have been a humanoid heritage, the creature wore the grimy and ripped remains of what must have once been some kind of shirt. But the shirt was stretched to the max over a gigantic pot-belly looked sizable enough to accommodate several children. Something made Heather think about the labels put on some machines in some employees-only areas of the mall—_Keep pets and small children away. _Someone ought to staple that sign to the creature and try covering up its over-sized organ of reproduction while they were at it, too.

Yes, the creature was humanoid and male. It was anatomically correct to the point of having its organs of reproduction in plain sight. What a sight it was too. The long part of it being was clearly about the length and size of a grown-man's arm, the sacked part having things the size of baseballs.

_Even rhinos aren't hung like that_, thought Heather as panic began to take over. The girl saw that man-thing was drooling and panting as it shoved itself through the doorway, squeezing its gigantically _massive _monster-belly through. No doubt it would try forcing its way into _her _in a similar way, drooling and panting….

Heather looked around for something to use. Of course the initially-human staff took her switchblade when they first admitted her here, along with taking her walk-in clothes. It was a sucky trade: her undies, her comfy jeans and even her _Robbie the Rabbit _tank-top swapped for a flimsy gown. Even so, if this was anywhere else outside in the city, some alleyway always had something in the way of a rusty pipe or piece of junk to snatch up and use as a bludgeon. Her glance swept over the desk—nothing there but her books and diary along with what was used to write in the diary. Stab 'em with a pen?

Hey, why not! It's whatever works in this situation. As the well-endowed behemoth began stomping over to here, the slender girl was light and quick, getting over to the desk. Oh yeah, they gave her some really good pens that looked like the sort needed for stabbing. These weren't the plastic pens one buys by the dozen at the local pharmacy or the dollar store. These pens were the thick silvery metal writing-pens made of brushed steel, looking as if they were made back when everything was thick metal and round-edged, like those heavy clothing irons that weighted about fifty pounds and those armored-looking cars that probably weighed fifty thousand.

Heather gripped one of the silvery metal pens much in the same way her grip would take a switchblade. The girl was just mindful that this thing was only good for stabbing instead of slashing. It was best to stab instead of being stabbed. No way was this girl going to end up bleeding and hurt, if not dying, when this was over.

Gripping the pen, thinking of how to approach that creature, Heather remembered that _hurt _was exactly the sort of thing her mind could do. Getting physically confrontational was the first thing that Heather considered when physical confrontation didn't have to happen at all. With her abilities, that wasn't necessary.

Her eyes focused on the neckless head-hump of the huge creature. Her mind focused as well. There had to be a brain in that nasty head, even if it was probably a brain only big enough to hold thoughts only suitable for the carnal shenanigans of televised pornography. _Focus… _

"_Whoo-hoop!_" exclaimed the creature in a thick slobbery voice. It stopped, its big round body shuddering, and then it decided it didn't want to be here anymore. The man-organ extending from its loins began to go limp. It was a wonder that the creature didn't step on itself in turning its nasty ass around. Yes, in turning around to try leaving, it now exposed its gigantic sore-infested rear-end.

_Focus…_ Heather really wanted that thing dead. Her thoughts were getting into that dark red haze of hatred and imposed torture. Never before had the girl wanted such a nasty creature dead, deader than dead.

Her mental effort was actually so intense that the creature's head burst open. If its head resembled the biggest pimple in human history, then the little fleshy explosion was like a pus-ridden popping of the before-mentioned. Except zits don't have chunks of skull or brains to go every which way. And then fire came out.

As the man-creature's headless body toppled to fall _splat _to the floor, Heather thought about how close this instance was. The huge creature had such a huge _organ _that it scared her outright, making her almost forget her own abilities. It was the panic that did the trick, lots of panic and lots more revulsion. If Heather hadn't remembered that basic and important fact about herself that soon, it would have been too late. That man-thing would have won. The unseen presence would have won—finally having its way with her. And once that happened, Heather would have preferred to be dead. No way was that unseen presence going to get into her body in the way it wanted, no way in Hell.


	14. Chapter 14

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

"Never Grow Old"

music and lyrics by Rubyhorse

Chapter 14

…

1.

…

_Moments faded in…and faded right back out again. The girl barely felt herself being here. Most of her was somewhere else sometimes. Even that wasn't certain, not sure of being here, not really anywhere. Things just went gently on by, coming and going._

_How is that supposed to make any kind of sense? Nothing can exist nowhere. In other words, everything has to be somewhere. That includes the minds of skinny nineteen-year-old girls who dress up in trailer-trash clothes, dye their hair blonde and work at mall bookstores. Does it make logical sense? Of course not. It makes its own kind of sense._

_Fade in, the girl saw a ceiling made of rusted grating through dimmed vision—herself drifting along. Circular light fixtures glared down. The glaring white brightness of the light fixtures made the darkness beyond the grates look even darker and…fade out. _

_Fade in again, a blurry red creature in darkness stood over her stilled and helpless body. The creature had a huge head of of wet, cancerous living meat. If head-size was an indicator of intelligence, then the thing was probably worth three Einstein-brains duct-taped together and with synapses firing full speed. Don't try glue for brains, because brains are wet and squishy, and they won't stick…. Suffice to say, nasty as the thing was, it was really smart when it came to using the strange machines. The creature was doing something very important pertaining to the business at hand. It was getting ready to use the machines for the girl's sake. Fade out… _

_Fade in, one of those strange machines was in a crimson-lit room of metal-brick walls. Those bricks were made of lead, because this room was all full of the bad radiation given off by the machine. The hard radiation was so intense that one could actually feel it like heat as the very flesh of one's body was reacting. Nobody in their right mind would be here willingly. That engine-machine was gushing out all of that hard radiation and more. Fade out._

…

_Fade in… An engine-machine was still rumbling as Heather felt eased sideways into a seat. Her eyes opened…_to see close-up a cold glass surface. The only thing visible beyond the glass was a roadway blurring by. It was just so dark out that only the side-running lights of the bus made the road surface visible.

That's right. This was a bus. This was Heather in the bus…or _on the bus _in more common parlance. Now that made the still-drowsy girl give pause. Thinking, _Why the heck do people say, being _on _the bus? You'd think they got some hapless guy up to the roof and lashed 'em down with flexy bungee cord or something. It'd be a scary ride, especially getting round corners, but I'd bet the view would be pretty awesome. _People are _not _lashed to the tops of busses. Normal people ride _in _busses—at least the busses Heather used. Other countries have busses where people can ride on top and have an open-air view, but not _Heather's _country. They also rode on the wrong side of the road too, and they called fuel by a funny name. Anyway, why don't people say, _in _the bus? It'd make loads more sense. Languages are funny like that at times, not always making sense…

Heather's mind was feeling a little without sense. All of her senses and sensibilities were a little bit out of whack. Getting a grip on her sense of place was a tad bit hard to do at the moment.

And then, there was the matter of this being a bus. A _bus, _of all places, how and why did that machine put them on a bus? So thought the girl in sitting up and looking around the florescent-lit interior of a gray, long-haul passenger vehicle. Funny how much the interiors of these huge land-based means of transportation resembled that of jet-plane passenger compartments—high-backed seats left and right of a narrow aisle. Way at the back was a privy. The thing was probably just the right size for one dwarf at a time on the plastic john. Over the seats and running most the length of the bus was a long series of compartments for luggage. The driver's area was up front with a light-up electronic sign for information. Of all places, a bus was anti-mystical. "And fair greetings to you as well, sleeping one."

That was Janice, sitting in the seat across the aisle. Pale as usual, certainly too tall and slender to be a dwarf, Janice was sitting sideways in the seat to the left. It had to be sideways because those long elegant legs of hers were not easily served with the amount of space allocated per seat. Her long black-leather coat was closed (for once) and belted at the waist, yet clinging just enough to show the slimness of the body beneath. Her big eyes stared, black-lipsticked lips with just a hint of mirth.

"Go ahead and say something else," said Heather, turning to face the tall seated girl of gothic inspiration. "Go ahead and make some other stupid crack about me falling asleep at the worst of times. Say it before I get a shot at asking about where the Hell we are this time." _Though I would actually prefer taking a shot at you with something sawed-off and double-barreled. _

"Oh, dear goodness, why-_ever _would I—of all beings—speak with such negativity in regards to your condition!" went Janice, her sweet voice thick with poisonous sarcasm. Her hands folded high on her left breast, just around the place in her chest where her heart would be if Janice had a heart. "I do so _deeply _care more for your health than I do for the well-being of my domain, the status of which was put in jeopardy due to your own doings."

"Just shut up about your domain already!" yelled Heather. More quietly, "Is that _all _you care about? You make yourself seem like some kind of princess or something. Maybe I'd care about your domain if I knew what it was, but that's really doubtful. "

Janice's dark eyes narrowed to angry slits, yet her sweet-poison voice remained even. "Having been there too many times yourself, corrupted as it is, you are quite familiar with it. That is all I shall explicitly say regarding details of the latter. You are perceptive enough to understand an answer from there."

What place was familiar? From what Janice said, that could be anywhere Heather had been often. What, did Janice think herself the Princess of the Central Square Mall Employees-Only Areas or some crap like that? Heather's own place of work wasn't really a corrupted domain unless one thought about the romance (porn) novels sold for lonely women looking for naughty literary thrills. Write up some porn, call it _literature _and sell it out in public. Now _that's _a great racket…pervie as it may be.

Nah, that couldn't be Janice's kingdom…or princess-dom, or whatever. How about…Princess of The Apartment Buildings? That place was _definitely _corrupt in the physical sense—the wiring and plumbing not being in the best of shape. Neither was the tiled floor of the building's first level. And who knows? Maybe the super was doing something shady on the side to corrupt local politicians. How else could that building pass building-code inspections and stuff?

If not that, then maybe Janice's domain was the bathroom! Hey, why not? Janice _did _say that Heather ought to be familiar with that place, and _everybody _knows bathrooms from using them all the time. If they don't, then they'd best see a doctor. Don't forget about the all-important, water-filled porcelain throne. But shouldn't a princess of porcelain have a taste in clothing that was more on the brighter and shinier side, just like how bathrooms are all shiny and tiley? Maybe Janice ought to trade in that goth-death getup for a toilet-paper gown of royalty and a scrub-brush tiara. On the other hand, who knows what a toilet-bowl princess _supposed _to look like anyway? Then Heather thought about another place where fate took her, again and again, a certainscrewed-up town. Was Heather there too often? Being there even once was too often for anybody. Being in bizarro-world alternate universes more than once was also too often for the sake of anybody's sanity. Heather wasn't the only one dragged in on the fun, though. Speak of which…

"Hey, where's that Janitor guy?" asked Heather, standing up from her seat and looking around the bus. Had Heather been of average height, standing like this would mean ducking down beneath the overhead baggage compartment. That was one advantage of being short—not having to duck too often. It didn't make the short jokes worth it. Nevertheless, it was a boon to someone who didn't want to be stoop-shouldered and hunch-backed later in life from having to duck down too often.

The so-called Janitor-guy leaned left to look out into the passenger aisle, gave a wave of his right hand. He was actually at the front-seat of the bus, closest to the driver. "Hey back there! Just passin' the time with the entity that's kind enough to get us to the right place."

_Are you kidding me? Since when is a bus driver an entity?_ Heather guessed it must be so ever since floor-scrubs started having their professions capitalized like important titles. Hah, pistol-toting _Janitors_, claiming to be helping save the stability of the universe or some deranged superhero stuff like that. _Deranged _was the adjective because people like that ought to be thrown head-first into the loony bin and not let them out 'til they were better.

_Yeah! Thrown 'em in the loony bin 'til they're better…just like the other me, _thought the girl, sitting down and suddenly regretting previous considerations. No doubt her own Dad—when he was alive—had considered doing something like that. Heather remembered back some years when blank-fronted envelopes came in the mail. Curiosity made her hold them up to the kitchen light to see sentences in the unopened letters. Those sentences included words such as _mental health _and _counseling. _So what if Heather had the occasional angry fit? At least her father's concern wasn't because of her not liking boys. Dad was too enlightened a guy to consider that abnormal. Still, the girl's fiery fits of anger, the acts of petty crime, the underaged smoking, those couldn't be rightly be said to be parts of acceptable behavior. Being sane meant being acceptable depending on whatever society one lived in.

Heather heard the Janitor making his way back here to the center-seats of the bus, herself leaning over to get her a view of him coming this way. He had this big grin on his face as he sat down in a seat diagonally forward-left of Heather's—sitting sideways and leaning forward as so he could talk and be seen by the two others riding here. And he was still grinning. _For cripes' sakes, how can that guy have a goofy grin on his mug in a situation like this?_

Said the Janitor, "Okay, we're on the right way now. Turns out our location did a shift on us. Now we've got a little mercy and consideration on our side to help us go the right way. We're blessed."

Asked Heather, "Being_ 'blessed?'_ Is that what you wanna call this? Since when is a _bus _something holy? Like something just reached down from on-high and saved us from Hell or something, putting us on a ride where some hard-scrub guys have to use spatulas to get gum off the floor and wipe snot off the windows? How is _that _holy?" The girl leaned forward. "That sounds a little too much like religious craziness to me, and I've heard all the religion-talk I need for a lifetime. Make that more than one lifetime."

"More than one lifetime, you say. And you deny impeding upon my domain!" came Janice's surprisingly agitated voice. Heather suddenly looked at Janice—whose normally smooth manner was overcome with a surprising degree of anger. "Mark my words! We may yet be sisters in origin. Yet, even sisters are to respect each others' laws. Such _laws _that must not go unheeded."

Thought Heather, _Hey, I'm supposed to be the one getting angry around here! _"You know what, Janice? I still don't get what you're talking about." A smile spread Heather's lips. "Well maybe if you decided to stop ranting in riddles and started using normal language like everybody else, maybe people would understand what your beef is."

Said this angry Janice, "You know full well the nature of the transgression! By your own admission, you have in fact partaken of it. My servants may temporarily be indisposed, yet you _must _be chastised soon enough for your bold manner."

This made Heather's smile even brighter, her thinking, _So goth-girl can't call up her invisible buddies for now? _The fact that Janice couldn't hurt Heather for the moment was a bonus. _This is way too cool. Now I can talk all the trash I want. _

It wasn't way too cool for long. _Clank-k-k! _Something slammed something else hard, the bus lurching to the left, and darkness rushed down on everything—the lights of the bus… _Boom-boom, out go the lights! So did Heather's lights… _

…

2.

…

_Heather was barely aware of what was done after that. Smooth-scaled hands—cold hands—grabbed her ankles and hefted her aloft as easily as one would snatch up a mannequin. The girl was particularly light and easy to lift. Even so, light or heavy, the inhumanly strong hands that grabbed her would probably have had an easy time of picking up anyone. Those hands lifted her up high enough to heft her onto a cold hard-fleshed shoulder that was too huge and muscular to be humanly possible. _

_Well, whoever said that humans were the only ones with shoulders? This must be the shoulders of an unseen servant—one of Janice's invisible boys. Gosh-golly, no wonder why those jokers were so darned strong. They were probably built like the living equivalent of wrecking machines. _

_Heather let herself get carried along. It wasn't like the girl was able to do much else anyway—being knocked silly by that bus crash. Things would be just fine so long as those hands on her didn't get personal. The girl would also like to _not _see the face of whatever thing was carrying her. That was okay as well—because a person could not see the face of the invisible servant with just human eyes. _

_The invisible servant lowered Heather butt-first onto a hard smooth surface and propped her up. Heather had just barely enough strength to sit up and not go slumping over. Sitting like that would mean her tits would be smooshed against her thighs. So Heather stayed sitting up her senses barely…_started getting right again. Even somebody nearly knocked senseless knows a bus-stop on sight, even at night, especially somebody who's been using them for all of her adult life. That would be even if Heather was just two years into her adult life anyway.

A streetlamp with a one-story post shone down on this bus-stop with a dim electric-blue light. The bus stop itself was just a wide, backless-metal bench with support posts set in a gray concrete rectangle. This concrete square was set before the darkened highway which the bus must have used in getting here. Heather could only assume it was just a section of desert highway because—looking left and right—beyond the hazy reach of the streetlamp, the girl could not see anything else. It was as if this place was in an ocean of darkness. No, that wasn't quite right. Just barely, if Heather stared, there _was _a landscape out there—a dark and hazy-gray desert landscape…

Said Janice from behind, "I spare you the customary verbal goading and shall instead give appraisal of our situation. Suffice to say that we have somehow arrived at a location within the vicinity of our intended destination."

Though her head was still spinning a little, Heather turned herself around on the backless bench to see Janice leaning against the streetlamp. The artificial light from above made Janice's goth-pale skin look even more pale and therefore more gothy, her leather mini-skirted dress and open jacket looking darker still. With a slender body clad in something tight and revealing, Janice looked a lot like someone who stood beneath street lamps at night as part of a certain carnal profession. Then again, knowing Janice, anybody who paid her for a night of good times would probably wake up dead.

The Janitor did not wake up dead. He was slumped behind her against the same pole. That guy looked like the end-result of too much free time on a weekend night and in one piece. Even working stiffs needed their good times. Work hard, and play hard. That was the motto. Except the Janitor hasn't had hard-core play-time in a while. Trying to maintain the fabric of reality didn't give too much time off for breaks, the pay was terrible, and some of his current co-workers were the worst.

Beyond Janice, the Janitor and the street-lamp was the parking lot of a one-story motel. Both the parking lot and motel were well-lit against the surrounding night. The motel, that was important.

The structure was a one-story concrete deal that could be found along any stretch of highway. They always had generically eye-rolling names like The Motor Lodge or The Highway Inn. It was bad when the names got cute, like using alliteration—Motor Motel or Indian Inn. Busses and cars ought to stock barf bags when taking in sight of these things, because they were so boring and trite in monickers that they'd make a girl sick with disgust. Can't people be more creative for once? Thank goodness the motel billboard didn't have a name painted on it, because the name would probably just make her hurl with boredom ahnyay.

Janice's leggy stride took her some paces away as the Janitor began to stir, the Janitor reaching to the soft-cap atop his head as he looked around. "We're alive, baby! Not too shabby a state to be in."

"Speak for yourself," went Heather, right hand going to a side of that blonde-haired head of hers. "The way that bus ride went, I'm starting to feel like it ran over our heads before it left."

"Yeah, and we're kinda lucky headaches are all that we've got from the transition," said the Janitor. He then slipped into phrasing that was no doubt drilled into him from whatever training he received in whatever alternate reality or time period he was from. "Transition symptoms can range slight headaches and disorientation to severe nausea and temporary hallucinations, visual or auditory." He slipped back into his own common verbal patterns. "In short, it's gonna feel like we're suckin' for a little while."

"Sucking _what_," responded Heather. "Never mind. Don't answer that. Janice's looks like everything's all fine and dandy. Well, that's except for her _domain _and stuff."

"And _stuff,_" mocked Janice. "In a previous incarnation, you were just so much more articulate in this tongue. They are present just beneath your consciousness, and I am tempted to have them reassert themselves within you at this very moment. It would be a simple matter for me to reassert those verbal patterns within your brain."

"Leave my brain outta this," said Heather. "It feels stirred up enough already." Crossing lithe arms over her midsection, the girl looked around—darkness around the bus-stop and the nearby motel. "Anyway, I thought you said that weird bus was going to take us to where we had to be. This doesn't look like anywhere that _anybody _needs to be. _Is _this anywhere?"

The Janitor gave an impatient shake of his head, which made him give pause from where he still sat slumped. Disorientation doesn't go well with shaking one's braincase. "Don't bad-mouth that good one. He gave us the ride here. He could have just left us to be where we were forever. Forever is a long time. But he didn't take us here without a good reason. And who knows, maybe you'll need his mercy again after we're done." Or maybe, Heather bad-mouthing the entity driving the bus led to them being dumped here—wherever _here was. _

"That still doesn't answer my question!" insisted Heather. "Where _is _this place? You said we were close enough. All I see is some motel and…" The girl paused. "A whole bunch of _nothing _all around."

Heather felt like such a liar even before finishing that statement. There wasn't just _nothing _out there in the night-darkened desert landscape. Oh yes, the girl knew that it was desert out there though no light shone down on it—dusty desert-like land. No, it was worse than desert-land. It was deadland, a wastedplace. If it was daytime, a person would see a forbidding and broken-down landscape that looked so desolate that it may as well be real-estate transplanted straight from the moon. Scientists used to have theories like the moon breaking off from the Earth all those billions of years ago when the solar system was formed. Of course, the Earth and moon had changed since their long geological divorce—the Earth having gotten all manner of slimy creatures coming out from the salty wetness of the oceans, some of them growing up evolutionarily to be backboned, naked-skinned creatures that had fur on tops of their noggins, fur somewhere else too, and still with slimy stuff inside.

Something laughed. It wasn't the Janitor making that laugh. And it definitely wasn't Janice. Heather didn't want to stick around to meet the thing that made the noise. Now it felt like the darkness was growing eyes. Dozens of eyes could be focusing on them right now. So… "Hey! Let's say we have a look inside that motel. Any port in storm huh?"

The Janitor nodded to Heather's obvious suggestion. He also gave a pat to his right hip and let hands dangle loosely at his sides, a dark shape suddenly in his right hand. Just like that, he had drawn his pistol without making a fuss of it. Yes, if there will be trouble, there will be blood. He said, "Now let's just make our easy way to that place. We're gonna be calm as clay as we move too, right?"

"Right," agreed Heather while doing her best to _not notice the moving, humped shapes just beyond the illuminated motel parking lot. _Her legs were shaky as anything. And as was becoming a habit, the petite girl then crossed her arms over her tight and quivering tummy, walking that way to keep said limbs from shaking so much. _Don't scream… Don't try to run and look like a stupid idiot. _

Past experience told Heather that the shambling, malformed things involved in this sort of craziness were generally handicapped. They were often too compromised physically to keep up with a decent set of running human legs. Calling the creatures _handicapped, _was that politically correct? Yet that was just past experience.

That was also not _all _of Heather's experiences. There were those shell-backed things with some _really _fast legs. Now imagine something with a fast pair of legs and a really big mouth all full of sharpened chompers…

Don't imagine it, because those things could be in the darkness around the parking lot right now. It was not a very big parking lot for that motel. Maybe it was wide enough for eighteen cars parked side by side. Only three cars were parked there now, though—plenty of room in even that modest parking area. Small as the lot was, it still felt like this was taking too long to _calmly _cross the paved surface. Who knows what the Hell was waiting to rush into the light and get them? Who knows what order of things was from out in the nearby ruined landscape in depths of darkness?

Heather forced herself to still keep going in a calm manner if her body was feeling like the opposite of calm. Janice was meanwhile somewhere behind Heather and taking her sweet-assed time. It was like the taller girl was saying, _See how calm I am, unlike you?_ Heather looked back to see the goth-girl supreme not looking like an unknown number of unknown things were just waiting to rush in.

As her steps carried her along, her mind considered what could have happened here—making the ground look as wasted and as dried-dead as moonscape. Maybe a little nuclear warfare did that, blasting the forests and plains into lifeless and irradiated dusty plains until they looked like what one saw on gray face of that big round interplanetary neighbor in the sky at night. Nuke Earth. Make it look like the moon.

The nuked, lifeless plains would stay in place long after the rich psychos in comfy government chairs told the grim-jawed military guys in underground silos to press the proverbial doomsday button. They actually had to read codes, confirm those codes, turn keys, and do several other arcane steps of security procedures before nuclear armageddon could get a move on. But, the idea of one simple button for doomsday is just so much more a simple idea, simpler and catchier.

Or perhaps a little biological warfare was in order, nasty little demons that killed off anything and everything multicellular in nature. Those nasty little bastards were so small that not even light was big enough to see them, and scientists debated for decades if they were really alive—those _viruses_. After they've eradicated all known forms of life, the tiny gazillions of things would go into spore form—invisible and unseen in the soil—waiting around for a few thousand years or so just in case other forms of life tried to make its way in the world. So there you have it. Not only would nuclear and biological warfare kill off everything in the world now. Those bad boys could _keep on _killing and killing some more centuries into the future. Nuclear and biological warfare are the gifts that keep on giving.

Even those assumptions about all of life on Earth being killed off could be wrong. Life on Earth was said to be billions of years old. So some two-legged creatures with decidedly powerful brains and a spare set of limbs used to make stuff decide to put on a little armageddon-grade warfare, so what? That didn't abso-positive-a-lutely mean that _everything _on the planet would be killed off. Who's to say that some things couldn't change and live on? And, who was to say that some scrambling surviving bits of humanity couldn't change in order to live on? They wouldn't exactly look human anymore, yet they would still be out there in the land and getting on as best as they could.

Some of those things were most likely sitting out there in the vast darkness, the darkness out there beyond the light of the bus-stop streetlamp and the exterior lights of the motel. Billy-Joe and Emma-Jane, the post-nuclear creatures they turned out to be, could be sitting out there with just about a hundred of their misbegotten brethren, all of them with running sores for skin and stunted extra limbs, just waiting to see if it was safe to run in and make a quick meal of those tasty-looking new arrivals, their clean-looking flesh and slender-tender bodies… _Never mind _the clothes they wore to cover their naked, tasty flesh. Consider it gift-wrapping. Just unwrap the tasty meat and get to eating…

And _finally, _they made it through the motel parking lot and to the front door. The Janitor tried the door handle and pulled. "It's open," he said, opening the door and standing aside—pistol held with muzzle upwards and ready. He was scared and looked ready to bolt indoors himself, but that training he got from long ago told him to never leave battle-buddies behind. "Ladies first."

Screw being calm! _Calm as clay? Whatever! _Heather dashed those last few steps into the foyer. Janice did a curtsey, bending her legs and bowing ballerina-style while spreading out the bottom-hem of her long-coat with pinched fingertips. No way could Janice spread the foreshortened bottom of that dress itself. Once Janice got in, the Janitor followed and locked the door.

…

3.

…

Inside the motel was a place that looked like nothing especially bad or wrong had happened. In here was a softly lit living room-sized space, hard gray carpeting on the floor with a long check-in counter to the right—feeling a bit homely because the two yellow-shaded lamps on the long counter made for the warm illumination. A tall stool behind the counter was set as so the guy handling check-in would just sit up on that thing and wait for folks to come by. Next to that was another stool with a small TV atop it, serving as passive entertainment in the meanwhile in waiting for guests.

Of course, the check-in guy wasn't there. Maybe he lost his mind and ran out into the darkness to join those creatures for evening dinner, with him being the main course. Bring-your-own-bottle is one thing. Bring-your-own-body is another.

While the Janitor walked round behind the counter to have a look for keys and maps and all that kind of practical-tactical stuff, Heather leaned forward with elbows on the wooden surface—her eyes taking in sight of the television's blank face. Funny thing, outside of her own place, it had been a long time since the girl had seen a TV with analog turn-knobs and an honest-to-goodness pair of metal antennas sticking out the top—what they used to call _bunny ears_. All the TVs Heather saw sold in the mall shops had buttons and were cable-ready, with fancy digital-input gizmo-attachments. They must've stopped making analog sets _ages _ago. How old was that thing? How old was this place for that matter, and why hadn't those freaks outside ravaged this setup long ago?

Then Heather knew why. "They're afraid of light," was her answer, said aloud. Janice here and the Janitor over there looked quizzically at this skinny girl in jeans and midriff-revealing top. "Those things in the dark don't like light because it reminds them of whatever the Hell happened. Even if the bad stuff happened a really, really long time ago, they've probably been telling each other that brightness is the evil thing that cooked the world or something."

"Hmmph… Yeah! That makes too much sense to not be true," agreed the Janitor. "You sure you ain't been here before?"

"If not here before," chimed in Janice, "then my sister could have perhaps sampled the local news dispatches. Why-ever not? Her place of low-wage labor is indeed a place of reading material sold to the masses."

Heather turned to see that Janice was now elsewhere in this foyer, holding a newspaper that looked as grayed as the counter and the carpet. "In some way, shape or form, the mortals have indeed decided to try erasing themselves from existence by way of warfare…and conveniently saving my kind from the burden!"

On one hand, a person didn't _want _to read that paper of destruction, doom and gloom. On the other, there was no way that one could resist reading it. "Gimme," said Heather, taking the paper from Janice_. _The dim light from the lamps was still enough light to read the paper by.

This paper made for _very _interesting reading… And _that _is what journalists do—craft stories of interesting reading. All too often that _interesting reading _meant death and destruction. _If it bleeds, it leads._ Car accidents, train-wrecks, warfare and natural disasters make for fascinating news coverage, all dripping with spilled blood and burst bodies and severed limbs scattered higgledy-piggledy throughout the pages, described with words and shown in pictures.

Yet the stuff described in this particular newspaper made thoughts of train-wrecks seem like events at a teddybear's picnic. The front article tantalizingly described the escalating tensions from Russia and a bunch of countries that most people didn't care about. Threats of War, went one headline—talking about how President So-and-So while Prime Minister Such-and-Such said they were going to _proudly _defend their _proud nation _of Whatever-Land with overwhelming response to any provocations. It seemed like all the same-old, lame-old _blah-blah-blah _from scumbag-airbag politicians until one considered the dead darkness outside. A nuked world wasn't so _blah-blah-blah _after all, those millionaire idiots thinking they could have the world nuked. Destroy the world while they stay safe in luxury hidey-holes beneath the grounds of their mansion-estates—all nice and cozy, sipping burbon and banging their whores (male and female) until the radioactive holocaust blew over…so to speak.

Guess what? It _didn't _just blow over. This world _stayed _nuked. Things didn't get to be good enough as so those rich idiots could come out of their underground shelters to rule the world—what was left of it. Their world was destroyed, and so was hope of their future existence. Heather had the idea that some places in this world probably had places of underground luxury where the skeletons of those rich-idiot politicians sat. There sat the bony remains, dressed in scraps of rotting silk business-jackets and slacks, skulls grinning just like their once-fleshed faces grinned for the news cameras in promising better futures under their leadership. Some future it turned out to be. Her assumptions about this place being the ass-end result of a future World-War Triple-I was uncannily correct.

What part of the future? Heather turned back to the front page…and saw that the dateline had been conveniently and neatly nipped out. The way they were taken out, it looked like it was done by hand—probably doen by a certain set of black-painted fingernails. And only one person in this nightlamp-illuminated room was obsessed with fashion-accessorizing to the color of the night. In fact, all the datelines were missing. "Janice?" asked Heather. "What's the date on this newspaper?"

"Oh, why-ever should _I _know?" asked Janice, smiling. "Does it _really _matter when? This isn't your place and time to fret over. It very well appears that all the fretting to be done has already come to pass."

But it _could _be. Some of those names in the newspaper were very familiar. And some of their words were familiar as well—heard on radio news-breaks between songs. That weird bus could have taken them into another time instead of another place to leave them stranded. If so, they were screwed. Then Heather did hear a radio—fading in with…_a loud muffled hissing_.

…

_Oh goodness, it seems that certain people have heard the beginnings of a radio fading into their nearest plane of existence. They are privileged, yes _privileged_, to hear the beginnings of another moment. What kind of moment? What other kind of radio moment is there around here, wherever here happens to be? Yes, indeed. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, creatures in all stages of physical development, it is time for another…Silent Hill Radio Moment. _

_A country-sounding guitar got the thing started, slight taps from a light snare-drum in the background before other sounds formed a harmonic background. Then a country-sounding man began gently singing…_

_By myself…_

…_for the rest_

…_of the day!_

_Feelin' hours_

…_steal away-y-y!_

_Or am I just a dreamer...with a brittle heart of gold?_

_Swear I'm never, ever growin' old._

_Anything can happen_

…_in a flash-h-h!_

_True love leave you up _

…_the garden pass._

_Oh I don't understand this_

…_this feelin' in my bones._

_I know that it's time_

…_when I'm meant_

…_to prepare to go._

_Paper planes and wooden cars!_

_Elevators…to the stars!_

_Where in the world, are you then?_

_Faster than the speed of light!_

_You never even left my sight_

_Where in the world, are you then?_

_Tell me, Mary._

_Tell me where you've been._

_Sleepin' in the woods…with the trees?_

_There's nothing behind the door_

…_or under the bed._

_Go to sleep…again…_

_P-a-a-per planes and wo-o-ooden cars!_

_El-e-vators to the sta-a-a-rs!_

_Where in the world, are you then?_

_Faster tha-a-an the speed of light!_

_You never even left my sight!_

_Where in the world, are you then?_

_Or am I just a dreamer with a brittle heart of gold?_

_Swear I'm never…ever…growin' old…_

_A wash of static finished out the trailing end of the tune. The radio faded out from here not too much longer. This Silent Hill Radio Moment is over, the radio fading out of this reality before light came to spoil the fun._

…

_Ka-blam-m-m!_ After kicking open the door, the Janitor dashed into the motel room and then sidestepped, his weapon ready to put a few holes hole in anyone or anything that was ready to cause trouble. If lights in the room had been off, the illumination from the carpeted motel hallway would have been enough to see—no time to click on a wall-switch after kicking open a door.

A light was on anyway, a bed-side lamp. It allowed the Janitor to see any and all possible threats, anything that moved. What could be a threat worthy of being shot? Not the motel-room bed, not the turned-on lamp and not the desk—though the nightstand did have four feet. Those were wooden feet, not _real _feet thank goodness. Could a nightstand have real feet and use them to start a ruckus? Stranger things have happened, especially when one was dealing with stuff related to—everybody say it altogether now—stuff related to…_that screwed-up town!_

Heather walked into the room next while Janice leaned against the doorjamb and crossed boot-encased ankles. "I heard a radio get turned on from _this _room," said Heather. "It sounded all staticky and messed up. Didn't you hear it too?"

"Yeah, I heard," said the Janitor, beginning to walk slowly along the perimeter of this motel room. "It wasn't really as messed up as a person would think. The radio was only playin' backwards. If we had some kinda recorder goin', we coulda understood what it was sayin'."

"Why the Hell would anybody play a song backwards?" asked Heather before a stray thought answered her own question. The girl remembered reading about how some religious holy-rollers used to say that Satanic messages were in rock-and-roll records. Such messages were allegedly audible when one played the records backwards. That didn't apply much in an age when people had fancy electronic stuff like CDs and those little expensive players that Heather saw the other kids having. A person can't reach into a CD player and turn it backwards, and those little plastic music-player things didn't have any parts to turn at all.

"_Somebody _had ta turn that radio on, though," said the Janitor in still looking around and not seeing a radio in sight. "Somebody musta also turned on the _lamp _in here." He passed a second corner of the room. "None of the other rooms got light spillin' out from the crack between the floor and bottoms of doors, so whoever or whatever's here musta been here. Maybe still here." _Crack-k-k!_

His pistol sounded like a thunderbolt in the quiet and peace, a fist-sized jagged hole now in the door of the closet. A typical pistol firing small-caliber, full metal-jacket rounds will actually punch a neat little dime-shaped hole in wood. Such a pistol will also make a sound no louder or more offensive than a single firecracker. The Janitor's pistol is not a typical firearm, and that gaping void blasted in the wood was _not _the result of a neat little small-caliber round.

"Jeez! What was _that _for! _Have you gone psycho?_" yelled Heather, wincing and putting hands over her ears. Yes, her hands were over her ears even if the temporary damage to her hearing was already done.

But the Janitor wasn't done yet. He strode over to the bed… _Crack! Crack, crack! _That lean-jawed man in work-clothes and coveralls shot the bed three times, every squeeze of the trigger making a loud sound matched with what looked like an unseen fist striking the cushioned surface.

"_What the Hell, dude!_" yelled Heather, yelling partially because her ears were still ringing—and partially because yelling was the thing to do when one was a little angry. "Are you trying to make me deaf before my time?"

The Janitor stood there for some seconds with his pistol still up and ready, eyes looking around. He spoke loudly enough. "Better safe than sorry, girl! Coulda been somethin' in the in the closet and hidin' behind the door, or somethin' waiting for us underneath that sleeper. Those things outside may be afraid of light, but still… Maybe not _all _of 'em are afraid of light."

"Oh great! That's…comforting…" went Heather as a yawn forced a pause. "Now that you've staked out the room all action-hero style, I'm gonna crash on the bed you just shot up. After all, there's nothing underneath there. At least nothing that's alive anymore…"

That said, the girl staggered over to the bed, took off her sneakers to reveal a little pair of footie-socks and flopped herself back-first onto the soft comfort, her hands at her sides. Easy as that, the girl was knocked out by exhaustion. Somehow this was done with the comfort that this safe place would keep her here. This was the world the dreaming would have taken her to anyway.


	15. Chapter 15

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection_

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 15

...

1.

...

_For the first time in what was a long time, Heather…_woke up in an actual bed. It was the motel bed, a cover pulled over her slumbering form. Sleeping on busses and floors wasn't her idea of a good time. Neither was sleeping while fully dressed in clothes worn since yesterday. _Gotta do something about that, _thought the girl before enjoying a nice long stretch, arching her torso and her middie top going up to expose more of her hard flat abdomen, slender and finely muscled arms going _wa-a-ay _over her head as her mouth stretched into a…_ya-a-a-wn. _

Now her mind was going through the human equivalent of startup sequence. What the heck kind of craziness was going to happen today? Heather remembered how they got here. Now what were they going to do to get _out _of here? The motel window's curtains were thin enough to allow the orange-reddish light to filter through, letting the current inhabitant know that it was daytime. No doubt, the curtains were no way thick enough to keep out the intense brightness of when those nukes went off in this world. Heather herself never saw sunrise in a desert yet imagined the crimson-toned light must be just a hint of the very beautiful sight outside. Sunrises and sunsets over post-nuclear landscape tend to be that way, by the way, not that nuclear Armageddon was wholly on the girl's mind. The dust kicked up into the air from defoliated landscapes, along with the changed chemical composition of the atmosphere itself, that made for some truly beautiful changes in hues and tones at sunrise and sunset.

A loud _click _sounded from outside, followed by the revving of a car engine. _Huh? _Pushing off the clean but dust-smelling bedcovers, Heather padded on socks-covered feet over to the curtained window. "You are a rather curious one, perhaps to the point of incaution."

That voice came out of nowhere. This girl whipped herself around with speed enough to have cause whiplash in anyone less limber than herself. On seeing who it was, Heather's surprise turned to annoyance.

It was only Janice, leaning against the open doorway of this morning motel room much like her leaning not a little whorishly against that electric streetlamp last night. That's right, it was only Janice, death-pale Janice, dressed-all-in-black Janice, with dark lips to match. It was still hard to tell if Janice's lips were just well done with black lipstick or were tattooed black. Janice—creepy, death-pale, goth-girl—who has real-life witch powers and everything. Nope, there's nothing to worry about here, folks.

Anyway… Heather stood with hands on hips, fingertips close to where her top bared the flesh of her midsection. Said to Janice, "Normal people at least _breathe _or give some sign of being present. And if you want to pass for somebody with manners, you can give a greeting too, like _Good morning, _or _What's new? _They even used to say that second one in France. Don't ask me to pronounce it in French, though, because my French is as bad as my Gaelic, and I don't know how to speak that either.

"Oh! Do _pardon me _for keeping watch over your sleeping body during the night," countered Janice, sarcasm in her voice. "Far be it for me to desire your demise prior to serving your purpose. Perhaps you would have preferred the physically compromised, and physically compromising, company of the creatures native to this landscape?

Heather went wide-mouthed. "You stared at my body…all night?" A shudder passed through her. On the outside, Janice was one of the most beautiful girls that Heather had ever seen—if one looked past Janice's skin-tone one of somebody just legally declared dead, that is. Janice was passably beautiful on the outside, but something inside of her just wasn't pretty at all. "You are just _so-o-o creepy. _Anybody ever tell you that to your face? No? Well, they did now." A pause. "Didn't you even sleep?"

Janice stopped leaning against the doorway and asked rhetorically, "What are a few hours as compared to the vast stretch of eternity? It is from darkness from which all people come, and it is to the darkness that all must return. Such is among the _laws _of things." Janice's voice became insistent, her dark eyes staring into Heather's hazel ones. "Final death is to be respected as a basic law to all living things, one life per living thing, no more. _Do you not agree?_"

The sound of a car-starter revving an engine interrupted Heather's potential counter-argument, making her stomp her foot and impatiently turn back to the curtain and whip it open. That noise starting to get on her last nerves. "Jeez! Who's abusing the Hell out of some poor car engine!"

"Who else among our little party is mechanically inclined?" asked Janice. As Heather looked past parted curtains, Janice explained, "The Janitor has seen fit to not only secure victuals for your perceived physical needs, he has also seen fit to procure a means of motorized transportation."

"Along with probably looking for where you lost your manners. Yeah, and you might wanna work on your talking style too," said Heather, seeing the Janitor out there. "Normal people don't talk like that. They'd say, _Getting food and a ride_. Not saying words like _victuals _and _procure._"

Outside, that skinny guy in work-shirt and coveralls was kneeling in front of an open car-hood and doing something there, getting ready to abuse the Hell out of the car engine some more. Heather didn't even know what kind of car that was out there being worked on, other than the car having a sky-blue color. But it looked like the kind of car they drove in the 1970s or something, one of those cars with sharp rectangular looks instead of the sweeping aerodynamic and presumably more fuel-efficient looks from her world and time period. Then again, they didn't give a darn about fuel efficiency back then in the early 1970s according to what Heather read. And they kept not-caring even right up to the oil crisis later that decade. Or maybe that car came from a reality where the oil crisis never came, and cars manufacturers kept making those big gas-guzzling vehicles. All one needed to avert an oil crisis was a little exchange of nukes.

This world was nuked once. Something was definitely wrong with the sky, looking a bloody orange-reddish skyline. No way should any kind of skyline look _that _red, not one from where Heather came from. Even if it was morning, no sky should look like that. _Good morning... That's how we say things in America. But we don't know if this place is America, do we?_

By this time, the Janitor out there went round to the driver's side of the vehicle and got behind the steering wheel, walking around in the gloom of blood-colored light of dawn. Once again came the sound of a car engine being mechanically exercised, if not _exorcised _of whatever mechanical maladies had possessed it into being non-functional. The car sounded as if it was possessed by _something, _all sputtering and squealing and making noises much like how that girl in that book did the same when the priest tried to help her. (They made a movie from the book, but movies just aren't the same. Heather also read the book instead of _not _watching the movie on that still-busted TV back at the apartment_._)

_That_ car engine sputtered and squealed, the electric starter revving and squealing like the pigs into which a major religious figure-head was said to have exorcised demons, but the car didn't start.

"_Cowpie on a chocolate cookie!_" shouted the Janitor. "Somebody oughtta piss in yer gas tank and make ya die all over again, you forkin' shame to car-engines everywhere! Come on! _Come o-o-on you son of an automotive bitch!_"

Heather was getting quite amused at this. That guy reminded her a little of Douglas, a detective who helped her out a long time ago. Douglas, now that guy was _really _helpful. He was there when Heather's Dad was killed. He was the one who found Heather and her Dad, getting Dad killed, but maybe they would've been found anyway. After that, Douglas hung around and did important things like getting some extra identity papers fixed up for Heather. He used some rather shady connections gleaned in the years of being a private investigator, using them to get Heather a better birth certificate, for example—fake and not officially in the Federal databases, but it was passable upon physical inspection.

Douglas also knew how to deal with things like fussy fuse-boxes and even fussier landlords. The landlord then didn't like the idea of a then-seventeen girl, especially a girl of that age not being in high school and probably doing a lot of underage drinking and partying and all sorts of ruckus single girls ought not do! The holy-roller landlord wanted to accuse Heather of running a one-room brothel because _everybody _knows that _a-a-a-all _unmarried girls are prostitutes! Young girls with idle hands are _sinners _and _prostitutes _and _smoking that reefer! _

Yeah, it was that kind of landlord. Thank goodness the turnover rate for landlords was pretty high in the city, the last landlord gone in a year when a bout of dehydration during a religious revival-tent led to some medical complications laid him low in the hospital and forced him to find less stressful employment besides ranting at seventeen-year-old girls. Douglas had the skills to pay the bills, just like that tall guy in work-shirt and coveralls out there, cursing up a streak to redden the ears of linguists everywhere.

But comparing Douglas the Detective to the Janitor, the physical side of things were dead opposites. Douglas was pot-bellied and balding, dressing in slacks and buttoned shirt worn with a tie, also looking a little bit disheveled. That Janitor out there was tall and skinny, his sturdy working-man's clothes nevertheless looking neat regardless of whatever kind of rough adventures happened. Unlike Douglas, the Janitor also had a full head of hair underneath that soft-cap of his, dark hair.

"Big piece of turd in a chrome-metal sandwich!" shouted the tall practical guy in work-shirt and coveralls, seeming to lose his cool. The girl started finding this to be damned funny. Whatever training that Janitor-guy went through, some of it just _had _to include cursing up a blue streak. Part of Heather wanted the car to _not _start just to see how long the Janitor could keep up his string of expletives. His commentary went way beyond the usual obscene euphemisms for self-destructive sexual intercourse, solid waste products and various parts of human anatomy pertaining to reproduction.

Speaking of anatomy, Heather decided to see about washing her own. Breakfast could wait because the girl wasn't hungry. To go a day without washing would be just gross. The electricity in this place was somehow working. Where there was electricity, there was very often running water. Maybe it was _nuked _water and maybe a bit _too _radioactive? Heather didn't ask and didn't care. A little radioactivity never hurt anybody in the short term. It hurt even more to walk around feeling nasty before starting to _smell _nasty. _Ew._

Heather went into the attached bathroom of the motel room and found that the light still worked. It only made some logical sense since the rest of the lights of this place also worked, as did the exterior lights of this motel and the nearby streetlamp last night. This made some sense and not full sense because Heather still didn't know where the motel grounds got a flow of electricity. If this land was nuked, and all the people were crispified when given the nuclear bomb-induced suntan of their lives (and deaths), then who the heck was running the electric power plant? That Janitor guy knew an awful lot about places like this. He'd know.

Those questions could wait until _after _getting clean. Heather stripped off jeans and tank-top, bra and panties following, clothes flopped onto the floor. Socks went off her feet. A dusty washcloth was set next to a towel in similar condition. Dusty was still clean, though.

This now-naked girl went to the shower stall and pulled aside the curtain to get the water started. Turning the hot and cold valves produced a gurgling sound, no water. "_I just knew it_," went her out-loud complaint…until the gurgling sound became a gratefully wet gush of hot water out the showerhead.

_Now that's better, _thought Heather in stepping into the hot wet spray. The water was here now, and it was best to get busy washing up while there was still water to be had. First, her head of fluffy blonde hair needed a good shampooing and rinsing. Doing so would ruin the fluffiness of her hairstyle without curlers or a hair dryer to help. Screw it, Heather was the sort of girl who cared more about cleanliness than style. Her wetted squinting eyes found a plastic bottle that so happened to be here in the shower stall. It even had some shampoo left, which was promptly put to use for a while. The soap-dish nearby had an ellipsoid cake of soap. Soap went with washcloth, and that went to washing the rest of her body. Anybody who talked about miracles could just jam that talk up the part of their anatomy opposite their mouths, because _this _was a miracle—hot shower _and _good shampoo out in the middle of some place that was supposed to have seen the bad side of World-War Triple-I.

Standing in the spray, the thought made Heather give mental pause. How could all of this dumb luck happen? It wasn't necessarily _good _luck. Being kidnapped by some goth-girl wasn't good luck. Neither was being yanked into some next-door alternate reality where everything was shot to Hell and left that way. And shampoo, the _good _kind that smelled really nice, how did _that _happen? It was like something was helping them out, some unseen presence.

Heather resumed washing herself. An unseen presence helping them out couldn't be it at all. The only _unseen presence _coming to mind was the one which controlled that damned mental hospital-prison or whatever it was supposed to be. They were going to get there today and get the job done.

Two twists shut off the shower's water-valves before Heather stepped out of the shower stall…and saw Janice standing in the open doorway of the bathroom. _Uh-huh _Janice looked Heather's nude wet body over and smiled. Janice didn't have to say anything. Her amused smile said it all.

That smile communicated, _I know that I am being perfectly rude, but this opportunity to get a reaction from you is simply too exquisite to pass up. _Heather's lips pressed in anger, her eyes squinting into mean slits. What emotional explosion there would have been otherwise did not come to pass. If it was anybody _but _Janice, Heather would most certainly have used one of her bare feet in stomping somebody's foot before kneeing them in the stomach. Then her short-trimmed but well-maintained nails would have gone to raking that somebody's face and neck till blood started flowing. Never mind that Heather wasn't dressed. Even a naked girl can still have a temper and a set of claws.

Janice didn't say anything, so neither did Heather, toweling herself a bit before quickly bending over to snatch up her panties. Those things would have to go on inside-out since there were no other undies to be had. The bra and the rest would go on as-is. On top of all that, her hair was still damp despite the quick-and-rough toweling that would leave it really tangled. Heather didn't care much because the thing to do now was get dressed and get dressed quickly while Janice was still enjoying a free show if Janice was into girls herself. Yet the probability of there being more than one lesbian on this misadventure was just too unlikely. Strange things happen, though.

A quick-dressed Heather went to the sink where the mirror was, still hating mirrors. What do you know! Janice had a reflection after all! On the other hand, that no-reflection thing was only true for vampires, not psycho goth-girls, it seems. What if Janice really was a vampire and just picked up a way of casting a reflection anyway?

Anyway, the mirror was the kind that swung out to reveal a medicine cabinet. A new toothbrush in thin plastic wrapping laid atop the third shelf, along with a tube of toothpaste. Both toothbrush and dentifrice were of brands the girl had never seen before. It would be more dumb luck if there was actually usable toothpaste in the tube. Wonder of wonders, there _was _toothpaste. It was going to be funny, putting some stuff from an alternate reality into her own mouth. Maybe they didn't have a Food and Drug administration in this world to make sure that it was one-hundred percent safe? Maybe this stuff put Heather at _increased risk for heart disease, cancer, and other medical problems. _The alternative, going a day without a clean mouth was too undesirable. So, scrub those teeth! Heather set to opening her cute maw and began scrubbing.

All the while, brushing her teeth with the mirror still swung out, Heather could feel Janice's stare from behind her, _still _staring. Not a word said, nothing much beyond the squishing-swishing of a dentifrice-swabbing toothbrush at work in her mouth. Heather spit out the resulting white stuff and took a mouthful of water straight from the faucet to rinse out her mouth. That was spit out as well.

"Excuse me!" went Heather when the personal hygiene was done, waiting for Janice to step aside. Janice did, letting the angry girl out of the bathroom. It was hard to do an angry temper-tantrum stomp-walk when one was a slender and petite thing under five-feet tall and had small feet at that. Heather at least had to _try _an angry-stomp, darn it.

In the bedroom, her sneakers were still on the floor, putting them on. Putting on her _sneakers_, not the floor. A person can't wear the floor on one's feet. That is, unless a person rips up some of the wooden panels to strap on like homemade shoe-soles or something.

_That Janice_, thought Heather. Some people just… _Rrrgh! _Her frustration showed in the terse movements of her fingers in twisting and snapping her sneaker shoelaces. The girl tied the bow-knots maybe a bit too firmly and quickly after that. Whatever. Putting left thumb and forefinger into a pocket indicated that her old ID and money stayed in her pocket regardless of whether or not this world accepted either. Two fingers was all the girl could fit into the pockets besides those possessions, the jeans being so tight. Speaking of money, Heather thought about looking around this place for a cash-storage vault or whatever the former owner kept money from boarders here. Whatever, again! Maybe the money from this plane of existence or whatever didn't use greenbacks. Maybe they used funny-looking pieces of paper that looked like pretend-money that kids had in game-toy sets. _In Playland We Trust: One Thousand Pretend Dollars. _Regardless of her legal tender being legal for all debts, personal and private, Heather was ready for today.

"I hope you have rested well, for our destination is that of the town, said Janice. "Our mutual and mechanically gifted comrade has somehow restored the workings of that motor-car. That man have his uses after all."

_Whap-p! _Heather struck the mattress with both hands. That poor bed has seen so much abuse already. First it stayed alone and unloved for _years_ while the land outside was blasted to irradiated bits. Then it gets _shot _when some human company _finally _shows up—shot up by some weird guy dressed like a maintenance man but with some kind of soldier-technician training. Now some hot-tempered nineteen-year-old girl was taking her anger out on it. Oh, how much more suffering could that poor mattress take before it's finally had it?

"You just stay off my case today, Janice!" went Heather. "Okay? Okay…?" A moment of staring. "O_kay! _I want this craziness over as soon as possible. But after it's done, we're _done. _We'll be done with each other a lot faster if you keep this up and not done in a good way."

Unseen servants to the left and right of Heather gave low growls. Then Janice herself spoke. "Very well. We have an understanding regarding our purpose. We are also agreed in this, our party, being dissolved upon resolution of the issue. Now come along. Our transportation is currently functional, and we should move while it still does."

...

2.

...

It was warm outside—not as hot as Heather figured a desert would be, but still warm. The day was also just getting started. A big wide-open sandy landscape stretched out across the highway, the entire land steeped in sunset tones. Desert are supposed to be big open places where can see the land for miles and miles due to the crisp dryness of the air and the hot brightness of the sun. Such was what the girl remembered from old movies seen a really long time ago, like those movies Dad used to watch on that old VCR. This so-called desert looked dim and lost in hazy sunset tones even if it was supposed to be morning. If sunrises looked red enough to be sunsets around here, then how red would the actual sunrises be?

The sun, something was wrong with that too—becoming apparent as sunrise grew somewhat brighter. It wasn't just the air. Heather was smart enough to not look directly at the sun and able to tell something wasn't quite right. Even so, that the big bright center of the solar system was not as bright as it ought to be. If that thing in the sky had a dimmer switch, then somebody must have turned it down a lot. Something was very wrong about that. How long before the sun went dead? Maybe it couldn't be long now.

_Never mind, _thought the girl, looking at the car with the Janitor in the driver's seat. _I'm not going to be around here much longer anyway. Got enough of my own problems to worry about _

Janice walked past, her long dark coat and long dark hair fluttering behind her in going towards the car. Yes, it was going to be yet another ride with the oh-so-cheerful company of Janice, the goth-princess who was also creepiness-incarnate. Oh, what fun they will have…

If this wasn't going to be a Janice-free experience, the least Heather could do was avoid sitting next to her. "I've got shotgun!" called out the short girl in jeans and tank top while running to the passenger-side door. Janice would have ride in the back, leaving Heather and the Janitor to handle navigation and driving respectively. Since Heather knew the way to wherever they were going, it was pretty obvious of her need to sit in the shotgun seat, which was just a gangster way of saying front side-passenger seat.

The Janitor readjusted the brim of his soft-cap and looked out the left and right windows, also looked at the rear-view mirror. Yes, Janice still had her reflection, though some vaguely blurred shapes flanked her left and right. The Janitor ignored those blurred shapes for now... He then looked around again even while putting this car in reverse. Heather in turn gave him a curious look. "Keep your head on a swivel_,_" he said. "Literally speakin', it means to keep lookin' around even if you don't see trouble outright. I did some surveyin' and scoutin' around at the ass-crack of dawn, had me a look-see at the highway. The highway looks abandoned as a porn rack in a nunnery's gift-shop, but ya never can be too sure in case trouble's lyin' in wait, especially dealin' with this kinda business."

"Don't I know it," added Heather. "Hey… Is it me, or does one end of the highway look kinda funny? Not _ha-ha _funny. I mean, weird-and-a-little-blurry kinda funny, like somebody took a big lens and smeared Vaseline on it off in the distance. The sky too."

"Well!" exclaimed Janice from the back seat and sounding too cheerful. Oh goodness, here we go..._. _"Given your sexual orientation, any male company of your affiliation would know _all _about Vaseline, would they not?"

Heather went wide-mouthed and wide-eyed. It was true that Janice knew that about Heather. Also, _Heather _knew that about Heather, of course preferring to keep that aspect of herself private. But one person in this three-member party _didn't _know that about Heather. Now the Janitor knew did if he heard Janice right, _now _he knew. The Janitor acted like an old-fashioned working guy. And old-fashioned working guys weren't too tolerant of that sort of thing from what Heather knew. "_Janice. Just shut…the…Hell…up…_" went the mall-dressed girl, her face getting red.

"Ain't too keen on the purpose, but it ain't a thing to be shamed of," went the Janitor. "Takes all kinds to run the world. Done learned that in my workin' with people that don't even look like people sometimes. Do ya understand?"

"Yeah," said Heather. "I hear you." Her cheeks still felt as if on fire though. Now her hazel eyes glared with open hatred for that _Janice. _"Just so long as Janice can keep her stupid cunt-mouth shut about other people's private lives."

"Now that was wholly uncalled for!" said Janice from the back seat. "Such language from such an inexperienced girl! And to think I was to summon a means for you to take on some rather pleasurable experience of the sort that _you _would enjoy!"

"Girls!" said the Janitor loudly. "Now I'm gonna tell ya the same thing my momma always told me. If yer gonna fight, ya can get out an' _walk _the rest of the way home." A moment of silence passed. Seething anger came from both girls and made for an even—if angry—peace. "Alright. Let's get this road on the show!"

_He said it wrong, _thought Heather. _Get this show on the road, that's what he was supposed to say. _It was probably barely forgivable since the Janitor didn't come from the same planet that Heather came from was maybe not the same version of planet. Whatever. So long as the Janitor got this heap moving, Heather didn't care if the Janitor was secretly a nine-eyed gleeptarian from Planet Fenterbongle. He _did _get this heap moving, starting up the engine. It sounded nice and reliable for something that wasn't working this morning, a steady thrum like any car-machine should.

Dry crisp sounds came from the car-tires moving on warm dirt as this vehicle maneuvered out of this spot in the motel parking lot. The Janitor looked left, right, and left once again in case any vehicles came by—be that vehicle driven by an honest-to-goodness truck-driver or some wasteland-freak with too much free time on its hands, all four of its deformed hands. A right turn took them out of the parking lot, and they were headed along the highway with a fogged blurriness in the distance.

...

They were on the highway a good few minutes before Heather actually remembered to put on her seat-belt. The Janitor had done that already. A glance at the back seats revealed that Janice had not bothered to do so. That pale goth-girl was sitting back, leather-clad body lounged out, bare legs crossed and jacket-sleeved arms draped along the back of the seats. Her dark-tinted lips were still slightly stretched in that ever-present little smile of mockery.

Heather returned her gaze to the long, sunset-toned highway ahead and hoped they hit something to make this car do somersaults. Somehow, Heather would find a way to stay in this car, the Janitor gripping the steering wheel. And somehow Janice would be thrown out of this car, this car going _splat _right on top of her pretty-and-creepy goth-girl self, leaving a nice long red smear along the highway as it slid along. _That'll take her cute little smarmy look right off her face, _thought Heather, _along with peeling the rest of the skin off her body. _Pale gothy Janice being made red and dead, now _that _made _Heather _smile.

What stopped Heather's smile was the encroaching view in the distance. They were getting to that place in the distance in a hurry with the Janitor抯 speedy driving. After all, it wasn't like some donut-scarfing, lizard-skinned cop-monster from Dimension-X was going to give them a ticket, assuming they had donuts in Dimension-X, or cops for that matter. (And wouldn't lizard-monsters be carnivorous, therefore eliminating the possibility of donuts? Maybe they ate _meat _donuts with blood filling instead of raspberry.) Dimension-X was just one hypothetical assumption in Heather mind as to where all those monsters were coming from.

Yet if there was a Dimension-X, and it had a side-entrance, that blurriness in the distance would have to be it. That blurriness that was getting closer. Dimension-X, that could be anywhere and filled with anything—full of poisonous air that ate a person from the inside-out, full of nasty creatures that loved the stuff and loved to kill, or maybe a world full of raspberry-filled donuts after all. Would they _really _want to go diving or driving head-first into a world absolutely chock-full of monsters?

And this car was getting closer still_. _"Hey "said Heather, her voice not heard above the thrumming of this car抯 engine. "Hey, Janitor-guy! Hold on a sec!" Now mall-girl was turned sideways in her seat and pointing at that blurriness in the distance. "Do you see how blurry that's looking as we get closer? We might not…"

The Janitor's lean-jawed tan face was grimly set. And when one had a lean-jawed tan face, it made one look extra-grim, cowboy-tough grim. Both hands gripped the steering wheel. At first it looked like he was ignoring the girl. He spoke loudly and succinctly. "We got no place else ta go. Hell, we probably done already stayed _too _long already! A day was all we could hold out for without the right pills! _High levels of background radiation, _I'm sayin'!" He stepped on the gas pedal, which made for the expected results—louder engine-noise and a car that was moving all the more faster.

"_Are you kidding me!_" loudly complained Heather above the increased roar of the engine, looking at the Janitor, looking at the highway ahead, looking back at the Janitor. So this place wasn't so safe after all! Now they were choosing between two alternatives, if not two alternate realities. What's it be—a slow and thoroughly painful death as one upchucked one's own bleeding insides due to radiation sickness, or a quick death from breathing the potentially poisonous air of an unknown world beyond that blurriness?

And just look at that. Things were getting more than a little bit _foggy _as they were coming closer. Closer, that fog also seemed to have a distinct rosy tone to it like misted blood, a color brought on by the orange-red sunset tones of the sky filtered through it. Rose-colored fog, what the heck? That there was fog at all in the desert made just about as much sense as, for examples, a real-live tentacle monster in an abandoned closet or a wild-haired midget-creature in coveralls. Since both of those were things Heather knew to exist in a certain screwed-up town, that fog was all the more likely to exist. Whoever said that red-colored fog in the desert needs Heather's permission to exist anyway?

That fog started having its way with this car. As this car slipped into the faint mist, the view all around became obscured. Ah well… There wasn't much of a view around here any damned way, nothing but desert, desert, and for consistency's sake, more desert with maybe one lonely little un-nuked hotel, a highway and a 1970's-looking car zooming along the highway. In this car, a faint glow could be seen building up around the metal parts of the exterior. And since most of this car's exterior _was _metal, that would be most of it. Oh, and the surface of glass can also retain a static-electric charge, also taking on a surface glow.

That glow was all around now. It had a distinct bluish tinge to it, as if the inert gas from a florescent light-bulb could be cracked open and kept alight, building up around the car's hood and the side-doors. Heather leaned away from the car-door because the outside of it was glowing too much for her own liking, making her start rolling up the window as if that could keep out bad radiation.

And the fun had just begun. _Zzt-crackle! _The radio made a noise, and the Janitor winced. He kept that squinty wince as that glow began bleeding out from the car's dashboard--which had dials, doo-dads and all kinds of other dinkies wired right into the electrical system. Wasn't the overhead dome-light of this car抯 cabin also part of the car's electrical system? Why, _yes it was! _So of course _that _had to get in on the eerie glow-action too.

"_Whoah-h!_" exclaimed Heather in feeling a tingly sensation all over her own body, like mild electrocution. How much bad radiation did it mean if a person could _feel _it?

This ride may have started off innocently enough. Reddish misty fog was all around this car now, a car with a glow building up all around its metal parts and all kinds of fun stuff! The boredom was soon over, and _nobody _was going to start asking, _Are we there yet? _Then the radio started making even more fun noises.

_Fwish-h-h-h Bzzt-hzzt-crackle! _"_I see flowers everywhere,_" went the radio.Some how and some way, Heather found herself trying to listen in on what was coming out of the radio. _Hisst! "I'll see you._"_ Ffwish-buzzt! "Highway… When you screamed." Buzz-fuzzt! "Swee-e-et sister, I'll see you…!_"

"Stupid radio!" yelled Heather as her head started hurting. Stupid radio, stupid fog, stupid everything! Things were getting from bad to worse and worse still the more the Janitor kept this vehicle going. That tingling sensation Heather felt all over was beginning to increase into a dizzying pain that pervaded her body, feeling cold and dead. A vibrating feeling came along, making things hurt even more. Her neck feeling weak, Heather's head lolled to a side and gave her a view of the Janitor.

The Janitor was injecting something into his left arm—using a plastic syringe filled with some kind of bluish liquid. Where'd he stash that stuff? Probably in one of his pockets was what Heather was thinking. A person would probably say that this was not the time to get one's fix, but things were too crazy to be prudish now. Heather wondered if the stuff was good for a buzz or something, anything to stop the pain of what seemed like an oncoming death due to very intense radiation exposure.

That wasn't all Heather was thinking. All of this fog, something wasn't right about fog. It made her start thinking about the ocean of all places. The ocean, as in the part of the ocean with the Bermuda Triangle. In the books and magazines Heather read, books and such about supernatural things, people who had trouble in the Bermuda Triangle talked about stuff of this sort. Except now, that trouble was amplified three times. Heather didn't remember reading about it hurting so much. It felt like her whole self was being shoved through a nuclear-powered flour sifter.

The Janitor then dipped into another coveralls pocket and had another syringe. Heather was right, because he did have it stashed in a pocket. He used his teeth and right hand to take off the plastic cap and reached over here to inject Heather with that same bluish stuff.

Now the pain stopped increasing. It was still there, just not getting Hellishly worse. The girl vaguely wondered how something that looked as harmless and as cute as blueberry juice could be so powerful. Darkness..._closed over as the high-pitched sounds of the vehicle's tires had trouble with the highway. Heather would have cheered the Janitor on in his efforts to keep this vehicle going straight along the highway even if they were going to crash. A squeal of tires, a thumping of impact, a jostling of the vehicle, and darkness closed over her. Nice try anyway, Janitor-dude_ …


	16. Chapter 16

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

"We Are Mice"

music by Azure Ray

Chapter 16

...

1.

...

The place was in looked as gloom-darkened as ever—hard to tell what anything looked like beyond the desk upon which the radio rested. That radio just wasn't going to sit here and just sit on its lazy plastic butt and do nothing, though. That radio was here for a reason. Soft static hissed out of the speaker.

_..._

Some how, some way, the same brand of static hiss playing on that little plastic radio was also playing on the car radio. Yeah, the car was now a useless piece of crap. A car without a working engine is like a horse-cart headed by a paralyzed horse with four broken legs. No, it's worse than that. It's like a _dead _paralyzed horse, its head chopped off, the head taken away to be put in a gangster's bed. At least one can _eat _a dead horse. It now means that the car was less than useless.

Nevertheless, as said before, the car's _radio _still worked. Some way, some how, that little electric box built into the dashboard was working well enough to pick up the broadcast of a song.

This particular tune had a slow funeral-marching piano going and some kind of hush-static synthesizer-sound going as two women sang a deeply beautiful song in tandem, voices resonating.

_Soul in the eyes…_

_The reckless way we train to die._

_Our past…is our future!_

_The present lies_

...somewhere between our hearts and minds.

_For those…with no future!_

_We'll touch hands on the stree-e-et._

_Smile and grieve._

_Moving on…_

_towards the heat!_

_Bzzzt! _ Making a sound like a queen bee with another bee's stinger rudely shoved up its anatomical nether-region, a flare of sparks spit out from the car's radio console. That beautiful song was getting all lost in sounds of electrical chaos. That radio wasn't to blame. Its circuitry had already been at the cusp of exposure to blasts of radiation and heat from some other reality's version of World War Big-Bad Triple-I. Now it was just used to pick up transmissions from a whole universe away. Poor thing just couldn't take it anymore. The car radio just gave up the ghost, so to speak. So much goes for another…Silent Hill Radio Moment. That was also pretty stupid because all the vehicle's passengers were unconscious at the moment too.

...

As the car's radio decided to call it quits, Heather's unfocused eyes took in the blurred sight of a soft-looking surface that was maybe a foot-and-a-half's distance from her face. Thought the girl, _I'm dead. Something happened to me at the book-store, some random blood-clot in my heart or something got into my brain to make me go trippin'. Now I'm a goner, and this whole mess with witch-power goth-girls and super-duper Janitor-soldiers is probably just one great big loony death-dream_. _They weren't gonna just leave my corpse lyin' around the store and all, so they probably did some quickie work at the morgue and dumped me in some el-cheapo coffin they use for poor people_.

Blinking, the girl's eyes came into focus just a little bit better. _But since when do coffins come with dome lights? Ah well, it's better than some tacky mini-chandelier in some crazy rich person's limo._

Actually, Heather wasn't dead yet. What her blurred perceptions saw to be the lining of a coffin was actually the upholstered ceiling of the car they had...uh, _borrowed _from that motel parking lot. Don't say _steal _because _borrow_ sounds more polite. It's not like they ganked the thing from somebody at gunpoint or anything. They'd return it to the rightful owner if said owner hadn't been blasted into vapor by The Big One.

Heather still had her life. Heather also suddenly felt the tail-end of…_a really wicked headache_. _"Nnngh…" went her inarticulate sound of pain, hands going to the sides a head of fluffy blonde mess. Her hair was a mess because there was no time to brush it after leaving the motel and because this car had jostled her about when they crash-landed here. It was probably reflective of how the girl was feeling—like some creature with awful brute strength shoved a really big blade into her head. "Ooh…" _

_Again, the headache was only in aftermath. The worst of it was already going… That didn't mean it wasn't leaving peacefully. Nah, that sucker was going to stay in her noggin and make her really feel it before fading off. It felt like a blade before. Now it felt like a party—a big violet headbanger's sort of party where everybody's smashing stuff and getting crazy drunk, throwing up on the furniture and breaking anything breakable. After all, it's not a good party unless something gets broken! _

_A mental image glimpsed by—just an eyeblink's worth of perception. It had little men in coveralls…. Short midget-creatures in a hot and dark little room. What were they doing? _ _A last-minute burst of sparks flared out from the car's radio console, and the headache…_faded off.

The headache was gone, but would it _stay _gone? This skinny girl in jeans and tank-top stayed put just in case, keeping her head tilted back and breathing slowly, her hazel eyes regarding the velvet surface of the car's ceiling as the wind blew along the street outside. Only when her head was feeling even enough did Heather undo the seatbelt and shove open the car door, to get out of this car.

_Whoops! _Get out of the car? Hell, it was more like her falling out of the car. A swirling wave of dizziness made the girl go to her knees on the warm street. The disorientation wouldn't let her stand up yet. _O-o-ohh my gosh! I'm gonna hurl! It's gonna be so-o-o gross...! _

Which was worse, actually producing vomit or seeing the vomit itself, it was hard to tell. Worse still was the feeling that came as one's insides tried becoming outsides. Oh, what a blast _this _was going to become—a _vomit _blast, that is.

But, no… Heather didn't puke, hurl, blast, or even gag. Enough sensibility eventually righted itself to allow the girl to stand up slowly and have a look around. The physical cause of her dizziness and disorientation was gone for now. Now came another cause for feeling sick with her standing up to have a look around at a setting that was familiar but with some unfamiliar touches.

Sunset-toned fog wisping all around, the gentle rays of dying sunlight filtering through, their ruined car rested peacefully on the edge of a chopped-off foggy street. Downtown storefront businesses were left and right along the sidewalks—none of the structures over two stories high. It was that small-town feel that tourist joints like Silent Hill tried to maintain while also housing viable businesses.

_Let's see, _thought Heather. _Spooky fog that looks like it's hiding evil stuff, check. Abandoned streets with nobody in sight after having been gobbled up by evil stuff, check. Now where are those great big gappy rips in streets like the whole town's been chopped off from Earth? _

Turn around. Yup, there was a gap right now that cut right into the street and made a cliff behind the car. It wasn't a neat little cut in the street either. Now when somebody says something is _chopped, _it implies some sloppy hacking job with a dull thing that that leaves a jagged edge. Looking over a foggy cliff can't tell a person how high up the cliff is from the ground—whatever the ground would look like.

Yup, this was Silent Hill. It wasn't the exact-same Silent Hill in which Janice took Heather because _this _Silent Hill was actually one of another universe. Silent Hill is still Silent Hill—be it beyond Dimension-X or another planet. One way to think of it would be like how those fast-food chain restaurants will open up shop anywhere ranging from big-boy America to holy-meditation Tibet. Anywhere one goes, the setup was the same. _Welcome to Silent Hill! Billions of unhappy Hell-bound customers served. May I take your order? _

That same fog was around here and obscuring everything along the peaceful town-street—sidewalks in place, dead-blank fronts of store-front buildings lost in the mist. It all seemed just a little bit idyllic. Scampering footsteps ran through the grayness behind Heather—being in and out of sight in less than a second. Then something made a squealing sound from the edge of the chopped-street cliff.

Heather knew better than to have herself a look-see. Something looking like a skinned, growth-stunted pterodactyl could come flying out of the fog and snatch her away. Heather didn't see those particular things herself and had a different experience with this place, yet there was no doubt that such creatures existed. Or maybe, something else could come out of the fog—something that looked liked a floating, spinning dog-sized meat-creature with cyborg-metal stick-legs in the middle and heads at both ends. Speaking of doggy things…yeah, this was the sort of place where those could exist as well. Every time the girl was here, this town had a new set of surprises, those surprises belched out from whatever grimy holes in reality they came from.

Yes, indeed-doo, buckaroos! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, creatures of all dimensions and places in-between, this is the place to do some serious monster-sighting. _Screw _that Bigfoot crap and the occasional blurry photo. _Sucks _to anybody who goes vacationing off across the Atlantic to wait on seeing the Loch-Ness monster. This is where the action is, all kinds of messed-up critters from all kinds of worlds coming here to walk around like they own the damn place.

Came a man's voice, "_A horsecart load of horse-crap!_" Heather quickly turned to look back at the car—seeing the Janitor slumped in the driver's seat. Funny, he wasn't there before. And the girl was so lost in her own troubles and worries about being _here _again that the others were so easy to forget about.

The Janitor looked at her from in that car and said in a sickly voice, "Hey, doll… Looks like we're in the right place this time, maybe." Not only did the guy sound sickly, he also looked the part—just about ready to let loose with a fresh warm load of gut-mush.

"We _are, _indeed," said Janice from the shadowy place of the back seat. With that funeral-black leather outfit of hers, along with her head of long dark hair framing a paper-white face, it would be easy to not see Janice back there. "When you two lost souls are done commiserating over nonexistent scars of a physical or emotional sort, we can go about finalizing the business at hand."

"Yeah. Whatever," said Heather, walking round to where the Janitor was still seated in the car—this car steeped in this foggy street. For his part, he had already unlocked the door and undid the seatbelt, using weakened and shaky hands. He was otherwise having trouble moving the rest of himself. "Are you okay?"

"Huh?" went the guy. "Oh, yeah. I'm as fine as a spring rain, baby." He gave a hard blink and looked—revealing a set of blood-veined eyeballs. On his clean-shaven tanned face, a faint miscolored streak trailed from one nostril. That trail could be just blood alone. If a clear and semi-syrupy fluid was mixed in with that blood, that fluid not being mucous, it would have been indicative of a very serious head injury. It looked to be just blood for now. A dried patch of the stuff was on the crook of his right elbow—either wiped there or dripped there.

"A spring rain? So long as you're not talking about _acid _rain," began Heather, glancing upwards towards the infinite fog above. The Janitor tried moving, but Heather put both hands out in a _stop _gesture. "Hey… Wait a sec. Let's just sit here for a little while 'till you're feeling better. I don't want you staggering all over the place like some soldier-guy after a weekend pass."

"Heh..." went the Janitor. As if the laugh-works in his noggin finally started working again, he added, "Heh-heh!" More seriously, "Ya know... Now that ya mention it, baby-doll, I could use a little somethin' of the liquid variety. It's too bad they ain't issued us hip-flasks of medicinal alcohol to carry out into the field. The stuff could come in kinda…" he blinked and went quiet. He was quiet for too many seconds. "Come in kinda handy. An' since this uniform is historically like a handyman of the old days, ya know where I'm comin' from when I say that."

"Speaking of liquid stuff, what was that you had when we were driving here?" asked Heather. "Was it some kind of medicine? I've heard about what they use to deal with motion sickness for airplanes and cruise ships."

"Yeah, but what they give ya on civilian cruises ain't gonna cover NBC," responded the Janitor, staring at the steering wheel. "When I say _NBC, _I don't mean the ol' TV network that went broke. _NBC_, that stands for _nuclear, biological _and _chemical._ When we went through that fog, there was no real tellin' what kinda place we coulda ended up in. That stuff was a little insurance. After one dose, yer good for about two to three days' of exposure to low to moderate doses of fallout-grade radiation...dependin' on yer stayin' hydrated. And two doses is all they issue us. Six days' worth of bein' covered fer one person or three days for one guy and his less better-equipped battle buddy. After that… Well, ya can take all the iodine tablets ya want an' still be in bad shape. A guy's then expected to get out into the battlefield and go out in style or sit around and wait for Charlie to get 'em. Charlie, that's our radio-nickname fer the letter _C, _which stands fer _cancer_, by the way."

"So you gave me your last dose? One for yourself, then one for…me? What about you? All this time…" went Heather, sitting down on the street. Her head started feeling feeling a little on the swimmy side, and all this standing while talking wasn't good. "What about Janice?" _Oops, _darn it. Heather didn't mean to ask about Janice.

Said the Janitor, "Janice ain't gotta worry about the same stuff we've gotta worry about. I wasn't sure, but ya seemed human enough fer me to worry. Maybe ya don't gotta worry about it an'…" He stopped, seeing Heather staring at him. The girl still thinks herself a full-blooded human. Anybody who said anything else would just make her worried.

_Some company I've got, _thought Heather. _A Janitor-soldier kind of guy who's too sick to do too much fighting, and some creepy goth-girl who talks like an extra out of a Victorian-era novel and dresses like a slut. _Janice's way of talking, it was just so…_outdated _and _fancy_, just like that time Heather had a look-see into one of those awful romance (porn) novels sold to lonely women at the mall bookstore_. _So long as Janice didn't trade her outfit for a flimsy gown and start pining for horseback-riding, broad-shouldered gentleman with English-aristocrat accents and goat-like libidos, things would be just fine.

Then the Janitor's head slumped forward. "Hey…" went Heather. "Hey! Don't do that!" Some quick steps brought her back to the open car-door, her hands gently the Janitor's left shoulder. His shoulder felt feverishly hot, as would probably his forehead. Being this close allowed her to see that the Janitor had another trickle of blood coming from his nose and right ear.

Heather's initial worries about the Janitor having head-trauma were coming back. When blood comes from those particular orifices of the head, it is usually indicative of two things—either being subject to major changes of air pressure…or major head injuries. And since the Janitor had somewhat slurred speech before, that second choice was the more worrying alternative. Heather wasn't stupid and knew that the Janitor was in serious trouble.

"Wake up," went Heather, shaking him. "Wake...up!" A troubled pause as the Janitor's head lolled down, chin to chest. "You can't die on me now!" You _can't _die! _It's not fair!_" Now things became frenzied and troubled.

Something made Heather stop her frenzied actions—that familiar eyes-on-one's back feeling. The girl stood away from the car door and saw some figures. It was hard to see them through the fog, sunset-toned mists.

Heather couldn't see their faces too well expected the worst. The girl could deal with flying monsters, crying monsters, dog-monsters and fog-monsters. But blur-faced things that look otherwise like people. Monsters existed in this town, being as real and as much a part of the town as the swirling fog…

For once, the girl was going to be disappointed—no monsters this time. Those walking figures weren't malformed invading denizens of some alternate universe out for a stroll. They were not flying monsters, not crying monsters, dog-monsters or fog monsters. They were just townspeople a little down on their luck—looking like people, dressed like people. As those nine or so townsfolk came closer and into better view, Heather could see the kinds of rough-and-ready kinds of things they had set to use as improvised weapons when there weren't a lot of weapons around. Some of them had claw-hammers, and one guy had a great big grand-daddy of a sledge-hammer. A few others made do with hefty looking boards with thick iron nails sticking out the ends, looking like they could do a mean bit of damage. One man was dressed like a farmer, and he had a shotgun.

_Of course _he had a shotgun. In all the books and movies with creatures in the teratogenic alphabet from _a _to _z_, from _aliens _to _zombies_, somebody _always_ has a shotgun. Some way, some how, some-body _always _manages to get his or her vengeful mitts on a good ol' _boomstick _in dealing with the other-worldly threat at hand. And in this case, it was somebody who looked like a farmer.

Heather was tempted to say, _We come in peace. Don't shoot! _But wasn't that what _aliens_ say, about coming in peace? No way did Heather want Farmer Billy-Bob (or whatever his name was) blowing some people's heads off because of mistaking them for Martians. Or he could _try. _No doubt the Janitor—even in his own weakened condition—could use that odd weapon of his to put some holes in some people before the guy with the shotgun could even think about taking aim.

For now, Heather preferred to not have anybody's head blown off at the moment—particularly, not having _her own _head. Well, just let Janice's noggin get blasted off. But knowing her, it'd probably just grow back or something. Who knows?

"You talk like normal people," warily said a tired-faced woman with a claw-hammer. The woman was dressed in floppy pants and an all-black tee-shirt. "So I am guessing and hoping that you are not one of those things. Am I right?"

_Well, at least two of our group talk like normal people. So long as Janice doesn't start some of that witch-talk, we'll be fine, _thought Heather. "That's right. We just ended up here, just like you." Her glancing around went to the various improvised weapons held by the various people. Thinking, _We're not monsters, so don't start anything._

That guy mentally designated as Farmer Billy-Bob crossed his arms to cradled his shotgun in the crook of an elbow, probably the way his pappy or grand-pappy taught him. "I s'ppose you-there folks are a-okay," he said. "A'course, I was gettin' a little worried 'bout yer elder sister yonder." He nodded towards Janice—who had somehow made it out of the car without making a noise. Now Janice was standing next to Heather. That goth-girl would make an excellent ninja cat-burglar, able to move around stealthily like that. Her nocturnal taste in clothing would be a bonus. Farmer Billy-Bob continued. "Come ta think on it, th' young lady looks positively _piqued_. Come on. We got us some sanctuary up in the church. Ain't none a' those things in there. Those things of _evil _know to stay away."

_My…elder sister! _Heather kept up a forced smile and crossed her arms to keep from _slapping somebody_. _What the Hell! Does _everybody _but me see some kind of crazy family resemblance going? _

It was too easy to _not _see a family resemblance. Janice was tall and long-limbed, with long dark hair that contrasted sharply with a milk-by-moonlight complexion probably borne of spending all her spare time sitting in graveyard crypts and reading death-poetry or something. Heather, on the other hand, was of…ah, less-than-average height, had short-cut blonde hair and was as non-gothy normal as can be. Yes, Heather was pretty normal for somebody who had some brushes with the law and whose parents were dead too. _No way _did Heather want to be seen as having the same bloodline as that weirdo Janice, somebody who looked like one who drank blood for kicks and giggles.

Anyway, now the farmer-guy and his rag-tag band of post-apocalyptic town-survivors were offering sanctuary—as by traveling through the reddish sunset-toned fog. The way the sunset-light shone through the fog also made the gray sidewalk look a little golden in color too. Hmm, maybe it was like a yellow-brick road or something. _We're off to see the wizard! Tra-la-la, la-la-la, la-la...! _Janice nodded to Heather as if to give approval to this group and began walking with them. Heather gave a last look back at the car at the edge of the cut-off street-cliff and wanted to remind the people of this group that somebody was _dead _in there. They probably already knew but probably also did not care.

_Click-clomp… _ Work-shoes scuffled loudly onto the street. Heather turned from conversing with the townies to see the Janitor had staggered out of the car—the piece-of-crap car. "Hey, folks!" came his shout. "Where's the party?" A slight sway in his step betrayed some kind of continued nausea. But he was at least on his feet.

Thought Heather, _He's not dead! I knew he just couldn't be dead like that! _This skinny short girl _ran _back to the car and over to that tall gangly Janitor. He wasn't going anywhere in a hurry, not with a busted car and a busted state of health, yet impatience just wouldn't let Heather move those sneaker-clad feet of hers at anything less than a running pace.

...

2.

...

Heather wasn't even fully stopped from running when the first words came out of her mouth. "Why'd you… You big jerk!" Her shouting carried across the fog. "You had me _so scared! _After all we've been through, all of that stupid stuff that almost happened to us and all, you almost just almost died for no good reason!"

The Janitor did not know Heather's personal history and therefore could not fully understand her anger. Well, the petite girl always had a big temper—as if to make up for her lack of height, but that's somewhat beside the point. Anybody with an honorary degree in armchair psychology from the school of bull-tish would understand that the reason why Heather was so _damned upset and angry _at the Janitor. The Janitor was a tall, tough-and-reliable, lean-jawed man who Heather depended on at least a little bit—a father-figure. Furthermore true was how this tall man was almost dead because of circumstances related to her—just like Heather's real father-figure of long ago. So at the back of her mind was this impression of a tall friendly father-figure dying on her, _leaving _her.

It happened before. It seemed to be happening again, a father-figure dying. The past was therefore seeming to replay itself. Just as the slow-whirling blades of a ceiling fan are set to follow a circular path, coming back around to the same place again and again, her life was looking to be like that. Things from her past kept whirling around into her future and becoming her present. Heather was born in Silent Hill, taken from that _screwed-up town _at birth after it was screwed up—wrecked, abandoned, covered in an otherwise unexplainable fog. That wasn't the end of the town being in her life, though.

Seventeen years after Dad got her away from there, some weirdoes from there decided that Heather's life was just a little bit too normal and had nothing better to do with their spare time than to _come kill her Dad _and try to bring her back to their freaky ways. Oh, and they had some crazy ideas about taking over the world with their religion or some psycho-crap like that. A crazy religious cult trying to take over the world, as if there was any other kind of cult besides the crazy kind… Gosh 'em-golly, what an _original _idea! They should make that into a movie!

Now here they were again. Here _Heather _was…again. This was the same kind of place. This was _a _Silent Hill—just not _the _Silent Hill. Just as that lost motel was from a reality that had seen the nuclear side of human stupidity, this other version of Silent Hill was from another place—another Earth, an alternate reality or dimension or whatever the Hell somebody wanted to call it.

This was the Town of Silent Hill, her coming back again after having left it again. _Of course _it was. Mind, this was not the exact-same Silent Hill as the one that so many people had come to love in dreading—going to bars and friends' houses on Friday after-work evenings to swap spooky tales about that _screwed-up _town. Oh, a person should sit down and listen to the crazy crap-fest of insane rumors flying around about that place. Some people said that something like crazy devil-worshipers and drug-dealers did something to turn everybody crazy enough to kill themselves, sort of like the Jonestown incident that happened a while back. Other rumors spoke of an earthquake or freak accident let loose a lot of toxic mist into the air, killing everybody there. Then comes the creepier tale of a secret experiment gone wrong, tearing a hole in reality and causing monsters to go scamperin' around on whatever number of feet they've been given. More sane and believable explanations involved space aliens coming down in flying saucers, abducted everybody and caused enough of a ruckus to make that whole damned town a no-go.

Anyway, Farmer Billy-Bob (or whatever) was the first one from the group to shake hands with the Janitor. The Janitor and Farmer Billy-Bob started talking, shuckin' and jivin' back and forth, talking with the jovial comfort of loose brotherhood that all tough-but-laid-back working guys seem to share. The Janitor made some comment about good people getting bad luck and bad people getting good luck nowadays, and the farmer-guy with the shotgun laughed before telling the Janitor about the sanctuary.

That farmer-guy had also took on the assumption that the Janitor was the one leading their trio just because the Janitor was a tall man with a firearm. Now that they were walking the foggy street towards the church, he also did most of the talking with the Janitor—asking about how _in_ _tarnation_ they ended up here despite being the street being out. That's right! Just naturally assume that the one man in Heather's party was running the thing. _That's sexism for you, _thought Heather. _Jerks…_

Heather glanced over at Janice—quietly walking along with that cunning little smile on her face. No doubt, Janice's unseen servants were nearby and probably getting ready for the signal to rip up Farmer Billy-Bob into separated human body parts for this offensive and presumptive behavior. So Janice thought of herself as being in charge while Heather strongly disagreed, even while the farmer and his group thought the Janitor was in charge. See? It all makes its own kind of sense. A lot of things make their own kind of sense when dealing with alternate universes that had flying monsters and crying monsters, fog-monsters and dog-monsters.


	17. Chapter 17

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 17

...

1.

...

Being as Heather had lots of free time on her hands and did a lot of leisure-time reading, all kinds of oddball facts had ways of popping up in her mind at times. And working in a place all full of books inevitably lead Heather to getting lots of freebies and sales from unsold stock—lots more books to read when not getting occasionally drunk. Now one of those random facts the girl came across in her leisurely literary amblings would be facts on the concept of _vacation_—as in the Colonial-Era American sense.

People living beyond the 20th Century have an oddball notion of _vacation. _A word is worth a thousand mental pictures, and the word _vacation _is no exception. The word _vacation _brings to mind some laid-back joker in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, sitting in a lounge chair on some beach in the tropics. There are always some palm trees in the background, and the ocean not too far away. Don't forget the over-priced eyeshades and those little fruity drinks with the little umbrellas in them. As to how anybody could drink that much citric acid and not develop diarrhea was a wonder. (By the way, we'll not mention to the kids that the stuff in the glass has just about enough alcoholic content to make it a reasonable and tax-deductible additive to car fuel.) This topical, fruity idea of _vacation _is further reinforced with those endless series of movies and television commercials where characters going on _vacation _are almost always on beaches, wearing Hawaiian shirts, drinking drinks with the little umbrellas in them…

The American Colonial-era notion of _vacation _was a different creature altogether—a religious creature. Three and a half centuries back, people weren't thinking about taking a lazy two weeks or so off of work with the family, hopping onto an airplane and going some place tropical. Jeez, only a stupid idiot would think they had airplanes back then. And they _certainly _weren't about getting scandalously clad to go to the beach and consume large quantities of fruity (alcoholic) beverages. Never mind how everybody drank beer back then anyway, even kids. They also knew what rum was. But they didn't sit on beaches with fruity umbrella-drinks and all that goofy crap.

What _vacation _meant back then was going to church. One dressed oneself up in black-and-white finery and took the trek to the place of religious worship. They also went on foot. Walking with them would be some guys with long firearms to guard the group against the so-called _uncivilized _Native Americans and the local wildlife.

It wasn't Sunday, and there weren't any Native Americans out to kill the white colonial invaders, but the general gist of Colonial-era _vacation _was still here. Here they were, walking in an armed group towards a place that was once a center of monotheistic worship. Farmer Bob was up front (of course) and walking with the Janitor. At the rear were more of the armed townspeople. Heather still couldn't help but thinking of him as being Farmer Billy-Bob even if his name wasn't _Billy _or _Bob_. The Janitor's own weapon wasn't drawn, yet he did walk with his right arm not straying too far from where the tool of human destruction was holstered.

That left only Heather and Janice without any obvious weapon. Heather didn't really need weapons anymore to put the hurt on some monsters, making her feel even more odd. Janice was to thank for that (somewhat), Janice having awakened something inside Heather that should have been kept sealed away for the sake of normalcy.

There was no mistaking the tall structure up ahead for anything but a house of worship—one really _big _house of worship. It stood up tall in the sunset-toned fog, a good six stories high in a neighborhood of one-story store-front businesses. Walking towards it was like being swallowed up by a mountain.

_Going to Church, _thought Heather. _Ho-o-o joy, I haven't been _there _in a good long while! This is gonna be a trip._

Having one's father skewered by something from a cult had similarly _skewered _the girl's view on organized religion in general. Wasn't that supposed to be _skewed? _No, it wasn't. Heather's view of religion really was killed. Organized religion, it seemed to her like some mindless dogmatic rantings that that passed for preaching. Where was the goodness of worship when her Dad was killed in his sleep?

What was going to happen in the church? What happened in _every _church? Heather almost wished something would come scampering out from an alley to liven things up and give an excuse to not enter the church. _Elkric, nes'mirk!_"

Lo and behold, something really _did _come along! Make that a half-dozen _somethings—_a whole bunch of little guys hobbling out from an alley. It had to be hobbling because it's hard to get a good running stride when one's legs are all stumpy like that. Legs, arms, torsos, those guys were just _stumpy _in general. One of the squealed, "_Ee-e-erg, ach!_"

Heather hoped nobody said _Bless you, _which was customary to do after somebody sneezed. Blessing? Those guys were going to get some blessings alright. Some of those blessings would come in the form of lead pellets propelled by gunpowder.

"Hell-spawn from Hell!" declared Farmer Bob. Bringing the shotgun up, he took aim if anybody really needs to aim one of those things. He waited as some of the things cleared the fog.

_Hell-spawn from Hell, _mused Heather. _Well, where the Hell else would Hell-spawn come from, Farmer Bob? Not from New Jersey, that's for sure. Then they'd be Jersey-spawn...which sorta misses the whole point. Hell, Hell… Hell-Hell, Hell-Hell-Hell! _

_Ka-blam-m-m! _Hell's bells! If anyone ever heard a shotgun blast on a quiet city street, they knew the sound. They would also have had sense enough to bring hearing protection. Over there down the street, one of those hobbling targets was knocked on its coveralls-covered butt.

It wouldn't be getting up after that. A dark oily stain spread across its chest. More of the dark oily stuff was sputtering from its mouth. If this was a war movie or something, that little guy would probably have time to say something to say like, _When you get back home, tell Momma I won't be there to wait on little Suzie's kidney operation after all. _Nope, there was no talk of Suzie, no last-moment death's door speech from the midget-creature's mouth, just a gush of that dark oily fluid. Now the creature was just one more dead dude-thing from Dimension X or Planet Egglesplork…or wherever. Ah well! It wasn't like those words were in a language anybody from this world could understand anyway—anybody besides Janice and an unwilling Heather.

Never mind that freak though, because that still left the rest. _Six _minus _one _equals _five_, as any six-year-old school kid will say…so long as that six-year-old able to stay at the seat long enough to form a coherent sentence and not start scribbling on the back of the classwork ditto _that should have been done half an hour ago_. That same six-year-old would then enthusiastically advise that the rest of the bad guys be made to go away.

Yeah, get the bad guys! The Janitor had already downed four of those nasty short guys. In fact, one of his shots took out two. It was two because some of those freaks were dumb enough to go one behind another instead of spreading out. The Janitor's shot punched through both bodies to spray dark oily life-fluid out their backs. They tumble-bumbled to the street and lay twitching to death. He and the farmer-guy then began finishing off the rest.

Would it be too hard to believe that some more of the little guys came from behind this group? Too bad if it was hard to believe, because that was exactly what happened. At least two dozen little monsters with heads bobbing and coveralls-clad bodies hobbling came from another alley.

Heather turned to see them. The rest of the group noticed Heather noticing, and they turned to notice as well. Meanwhile, the Janitor and Farmer Billy Bo Jim-Bob (or whatever) were having too much fun shooting up yet _another _group of short-little things that came out from an alley, coming from up ahead, down the street… Up, down, they were busy putting them _all _down.

Meanwhile, Janice looked pointedly at Heather. _You know what to do now. _Heather went wide-eyed, her mouth going open. Heather…_heard Janice's thought—_hearing Janice's voice echo in her brain. Bad enough that Janice ogled her after the shower, an invasion of privacy. Now goth-girl _was in Heather's head? _Hey, a lot of private stuff goes on in a girl's mind. No fair peeking!

Never mind Janice being in Heather's head because—if Heather didn't act—some teeth were going to be sunk into Heather's _body_. Do those little guys bite? Did a certain skinny nineteen-year-old girl want to find out?

So let's not find out, okay? Heather focused her thoughts on the crowd of creatures and mentally reached within herself for the hate. That feeling was building again. The girl was making herself…_start feeling the inarticulate red anger, the crimson desire to cause pain and suffering beginning to haze over her vision_…

A bright air-burning _flash, _followed by a shockwave-blast of sound, and the results were as awesome as ever. Faster than an eye-blink, no less than _six _of those little guys had been burnt crispy in mid-hobble. Instead of hobbling and breathing, they were tumbling and crumbling as their burnt corpses fell down and fell apart from impact.

Heather looked at another set and began to concentrate _some more… _It _happened _again. Another otherwise inexplicable _flash _of light, heat and sound came to pass—followed by a rolling echo that shook the foggy air. More of those little creatures were suddenly made a lot more dead. Come to think of it, a lot more were going to end up just like that too.

Now it became easy for Heather to just stand there with her hands at her sides, her eyes angry and focused on the creatures. The girl was on a roll. It was getting to be _just so easy _to do now, making the bursts of light and heat. All it took was just a certain kind of _thought, _and another gaggle of coveralls-clad little freaks was reduced to a collection of crispy critters scattered along the town street. Just so easy this was, just…_flash! _

Only a seconds-long moment after that, the peace and quiet of the fog flowing over the fallen and dead, did Heather blink hard and actually see what was done. _Wow, I'm getting the hang of this! All I've gotta do is want it, and it happens—just…like…that. _Indeed, it was _too _easy_._ What if Heather accidentally wanted somebody dead? It'd happen… That contemplation alone scared her a little. At least this fight was over.

That contemplation also scared the grab-bag group of rag-tag armed survivors. Here the were, living and surviving against the presence of Hell-spawn. They thought they were dealing with good people. Now one of those people had shown abilities that were strange, that were _evil._

"How did _ye-e-ew_ do that, girl!"demanded Farmer Billy-Bob, gripping his shotgun. "Ya'd better start a-talkin'_quick!_ How'd _yew _get the power of the _Devil _in ya? The Devil! _The Red Devil! Ya witch!_"

Her mood went from zero to furious in less than a second. Shotgun or no shotgun, _nobody _disrespects Heather Mason! Nobody does that, not Farmer Billy-Bob, not any of his rag-bag bunch of post-apocalyptic fog-town survivors, _nobody_. The girl _stomped _her right foot on the street, clenched her hands into angry fists and began shouting at the top of her lungs. "_You take that back!_"

When a post-apocalyptic fog-town survivor finds him- or her-self standing in the presence of somebody who just might be part of whatever the Hell went wrong with the world, the thing to do was use whatever was on hand to deal with the threat—like, say…using the back-end of a claw-hammer. Originally intended for use in home maintenance, the thing ought to be perfectly suitable for whacking a girl who was _in league with Satan! _Up went the hammer, the survivor-woman's eyes focused on the back of Heather's pretty blonde-haired head….

_Crack-k-k! _Suddenly, the survivor-woman was just holding a handle-stump. The business end of the now-amputated claw-hammer was gone. Something had snapped clean through the cast-iron metal to break the thing.

That something was a bullet. The Janitor's strange pistol was now held casually in his right hand, held in such a way as the muzzle was pointed downward. Make no mistake about him being able to use that weapon again in a hurry, though. He used his mouth instead.

"Now everybody'd best calm down," he went in a smooth voice. "We ain't the ones who did all this mess to yer town. Somethin' else did. We're tryin' ta _fix _things. Now if ya'd just _listen_, we can get through this."

"We won't listen to those in league with Satan! Witches! Blasphemers! _Unholy associates of the Red Devil!_" shouted another one of the rag-tag survivors, a guy who also had a board with nails banged in the end—probably with the help of a hammer like the one used by that lady. The hammer was blasted in half and wouldn't be banging any more nails into the ends of any more boards any time soon. Anyway, now that the fervor was coming out of the heads of the survivors, there was no putting it back.

"Witches!" shouted Farmer Bob. "Two of 'em! Lookin' so sweet outside but filled with _e-e-evil _inside, like the whore a' Babylon!" he shouted. "Kill the monsters!"

...

2.

…

Well, ladies and gentlemen, assorted beings of various alternate realities, a person would suppose that things weren't supposed to go this way. This was supposed to be the point where somebody was supposed to say some heart-felt things to calm down the scared and angry people. Then everything would be alright. Maybe Heather? That would be the case if Heather had a pleasant personality to match her rather pretty physical appearance. Heather was cute outside but not inside, so forget about her doing some verbally soothing riot-control. The Janitor? _Nah!_ He tried already, remember? His attempt at getting the survivors calm went over like a lead balloon. Anyone vaguely familiar with the density of lead and the consequential intensity of the latter's gravitational attraction to the cosmic mass known as Earth would understand the rhetorical, if not metaphorical, parallel. So that left…Janice! That's right, Goth-Girl Janice, who really didn't give a damn about human life and more preferred to dwell on human _death_. (_Meat puppets, _that's what Janice calls humans.) If this was an action movie all full of corny ass clichés like the good guys sweet-talking some other good-guys into calming down, one of those movies where the good guys always win and everything is always fine in the end, then things would have gone differently. _Maybe _and _possibly_, _would-be _and _could-be_, the point is, things didn'tgo differently. Things just happened as they did. What happened was...

Heather's party of three killed _everybody _of that rag-tag group of town survivors. That's right, _loddy-doddy every-body! _Every-body of that bunch of town-survivors was made deader than doorknobs at a darned downtown disco. And if there was any doubt about this development, one had best pay attention to get an earful and a mental eyeful of _how _it happened. Anybody who has a weak stomach had best squinch up his or eyes, put fingers in ears and say very loudly, _I'm not hearing this! I'm not hearing this! Blah-blah-blah! Blah-blah-blah! _

The Janitor's tactics are quick, his perceptions quicker, and his aim is quicker still. So the first thing he did was take out Farmer Billy-Bob—whose name really wasn't Billy-Bob, Bo-Jim, or even Billy-Bob Bo-Jim. That farmer's name was actually _Gribley_, which doesn't matter a whole bunch anymore more since a quick bullet from the Janitor's odd pistol made a hole clean through the farmer's noggin. The hole was clean, but a little mess sprayed out the back. Look at that! Whoever heard of a Janitor making a mess? Weren't those guys supposed to _clean up_ messes?

Actually, by making a small mess, the Janitor _was _preventing a bigger mess. Had Farmer Billy-Jim Bob gotten off a shot with his shotgun, it would have been nastier and messier. It wasn't so nasty now—a bullet versus a scatter-shot. The Janitor's pistol made holes that were neater, even neater on a farmer's noggin than an ordinary pistol from Heather's world.

Oh, and before Farmer Gribley's corpse (once presumed by Heather as Farmer Billy-Bob, now an _ex _farmer because everybody knows corpses can't handle the various duties of agriculture, at least not on this plane of existence) could fall down to the street, two more of the rag-tag bunch were taken out the same way—extra holes in their heads besides the usual two holes for ears, nostrils and such, like that great big flexible hole for shoving pies in. Now look. Two plus one equals three…three…_three dead townspeople! Aah-hah-hah-hah..._

Goth-girl would not fail to get in on putting down some _meat-puppets _herself. Janice stood there, almost posed—the pale girl, her long slender body in the tight black-leather dress revealed by her open jacket, a leg out to a side, jacket-sleeved arms crossed beneath breasts. Her dark eyes held a dark amusement, long dark hair fluttering… Her unseen servants went to work in doing her unspoken bidding of _ripping the heck out of some people_.

Some of those townspeople screamed in fright and fear as their arms and legs were yoinked off by creatures they couldn't see. As for those that had their _heads _ripped off… They couldn't do much screaming now, could they? Lots of limbs and lots more blood ended up on the street. None of it spattered onto Janice or Heather, and the Janitor was quick enough to move out of the way before some of that world-famous red-stuff could muss up his outfit.

What could Heather do, assuming the girl wanted part of this slaughter? Heather could have grabbed up ex-Farmer Billy-Bob's (Gribley's) shotgun or one of the improvised junk-weapons from the newly dead. Or maybe Heather could have started to turn her thoughts the right way to kill some people. But by the time the girl could use her mind or her hands, the red work was done. The _people _were done, all of them being done deals.

What a mess. Body parts were _everywhere—_on the street, more on the sidewalk, some of them atop an off-white van that hadn't gone anywhere in ages and probably wouldn't get a parking ticket for doing so. One last dying guy lay twitching out the last of his blood, both arms missing and a leg gone for good measure, the last of his blood wetly spurted from limb-stumps as everybody else was already relegated to the status of corpses. Holes were in some of their heads courtesy of the Janitor. Others were lying around in parts, looking like pieces in a mannequin factory—if manufacturers were to make mannequins out of real human components. And _that, _dear friends, is how one handles affairs of a physical nature in Silent Hill.

...

Both Janice and the Janitor looked pretty calm and downright pleased with themselves in what they had done. What were the odds, ten against three? Hot damn, and this party of three _still _came out on top! Janice stood there, smiling at the handiwork rendered—as in, the townsfolk being rendered to pieces_. _Janice didn't say anything for once because her pose said a lot for the moment. Just… Tra-la-la, behold this handi-work. Meanwhile, the Janitor looked around and still had his pistol in hand. He had a smug sort of look that communicated the thought, _Check my skills out, baby. _

Heather stood there and wasn't so smug. The girl probably didn't quite appreciate the work done by the Janitor and Janice's unseen servants, not even a little bit. This was probably because of her actually saying so.

"You killed them," said Heather, looking at the absolutely sickening carnage. Not a single one of the townspeople was even a whole corpse anymore. Even the ones that the Janitor shot were ripped apart after the fact by Janice's unseen servants—just in case they had any ideas about surviving gunshots to the head. "You killed them all." Tilting back her head, squnting up her eyes, the girl then let loose with a scream that was pretty loud for somebody so short. "_You're a bunch of killers!_"

"Now _y_a'd best calm down yerself," went the Janitor. "Keep in mind that they ain't exactly wanted ta keep ya alive. It was us or them. An' when it comes down ta that kinda choice, I ain't gonna let some crazed townies stop me from doin' my job."

"What if I _don't _calm down!" yelled Heather. "What are you gonna do, huh? Shoot _me _in the head for not being calm after what you did? Why not? Everybody _else _thinks I'm a few sandwiches short of a picnic!"

"An' there ya were, about ta kill _my _workers…cause ya said they were _monsters_," insisted the Janitor. "Don't ya _remember?_ They ain't did a thing to ya, but the _first _thing ya wanted ta do was beat 'em down…just 'cause they ain't been born with the right number of arms an' legs." He nodded. "Yeah… Janice an' I ain't the _only _killers in this group. The people we had to kill were _also _alive_. _In this case, we were only actin' self defense-wise. Ain't they got courts of law in _yer _world? Last time I checked, they did. Self-defense. A court from yer world would say the same thing."

"But that's different! I only killed _monsters _so far!" insisted Heather, feeling her own argument withering. "Monsters… They're different…" Janice had argued the same point, saying that _human beings _are monsters—just ones of another sort. _Meat puppets…_

As if seeing right into Heather's mind, Janice added, "We have been down this thematic road of argument before, have we not? We must kill that we may live. We must _kill, _dear sister. _Kill..._"

Something was wrong with how Janice said that word, _Kill. _It was like goth-girl was _enjoying _the word, forming it with her sexy mouth. Taste the sound of the word, the idea of it. _Mmm_, _kill… _

Lips pressed, Heather's anger-slitted hazel eyes met Janice's stare. Thought Heather, _If only you knew just how forkin' pissed off I am at you...! _Oh yes, Heather was particularly incensed and indeed had _something _in mind for the tall pale goth-girl. Yet the thing to do was not...even...think...about...it... Janice would get her comeuppance, alright. All Heather had to do was just wait. "Alright already! Let's just get going!"

Asked Janice, "Where, pray tell, are we to..._get going, _as you say?Your metaphysical counterpart beckons to you alone. The destination is therefore all the more obvious to your perceptions. Be so kind as to guide our direction, if not our actions."

Thought Heather, _Just treat me like some kinda compass-thing,_ _why don't you? Why don't you just stick me in a plastic case and crazy-glue a magnet to my head? Then I can point the right direction without having to say it. _

Even so, the girl felt that right sense of direction, like a mental magnet—making her turn to face the correct way through the foggy way ahead. This wasn't a physical kind of looking done with the eyes. This was more a looking done with the mind. A slender right arm went up, a finger pointing. "This is the way," went her voice, sounding just a bit off of her normal rhythm of speaking.

"Yeah! Let's boogie!" cheered the Janitor. "Don't worry 'bout it, Heather. Ya get _used _ta takin' people off the shelf. People, monsters, ya gotta take 'em _all _outta the game one time or other."

Hands at her sides again, Heather shrugged and cast a sad look at the _absolute carnage all around_. What the fork was he talking about, _taking people out of the game? _What did the Janitor think this was, a video game? While most malls were losing those great big rockin' arcade video-game machines, the mall where Heather worked still had a collection of those quarter-munching cabinets—screens all full of truly awesome but thoroughly _virtual _death and destruction. _Except I don't like how this so-called game is going, _thought Heather... _If there's some kind of running tally of what we've done, I hope we don't get a high score when this game is over._


	18. Chapter 18

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection (by Elliot Bowers) Chapter 18

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

"The Shankill Butchers"

music and lyrics by The Decemberists

Chapter 18

…

1.

…

_This way is the way_, thought Heather in following that sense of guidance in leading her group along the foggy town street. Now the trouble with such vague directions as _this way _is how it doesn't exactly tell how far one is supposed to travel. Navigation requires direction _and _distance. Going to a gas station or calling somebody up for directions, and a human being or two will give both of those elements in colorful detail.

For example, let's say a person wanted to go to someplace like, say…the Red-Ring Inn. _You wanna get to The Red-Ring? Okey-doke, kiddo. Here's how. You'll go straight along Ohm Street for a mile, see. I'd say it's actually a kilometer, like how those English guys say, but nobody in this country knows how long that is... Land's sake! You don't know metric? What in tarnation's wrong with you? It's like you never pay attention in school. When I was a kid, momma'd whack me black and blue for gettin' bad grades on my report card! Give me marks for getting bad marks, as one would say. Hell, I thought they would've been done teaching metric to everybody by now! _

_Anyways, as I was saying, the Red-Ring Inn. It's a straight shot along Ohm Street… Straight, just straight for five blocks. You'll see a white-painted barbecue building at the right-hand corner of the block when you're near. Goodness knows how the Hell they keep that building looking so white with all the crap pourin' into the air from the factories. Can't blame the cars on the road for that 'cause they run a lot cleaner than they did in my day. My day… Fork that, it's still my day! I may be getting up in years, but I'm not down for the count! Won't catch _me _getting bundled off to the old-folks' home to rot with those mummified relics. A living farmer's market of human vegetables, that's what it is. They ought to do what they did in that one movie with that old guy—give them all great big send-off feast before putting them out of their misery. _

_Whoops, lost myself again, did I? Here's to hoping you won't get lost. How can you? The way to the Red-Ring in is as straight as Arnold What's-His-Name, definitely not as gay as Gary's hat-band. Should take you no more than five minutes. The Red-Ring Inn, everybody knows about that. And if you don't get there, just ask anybody. _

Heather's threesome wasn't headed for the Red-Ring Inn—hopefully not today, hopefully not ever. The Red-Ring Inn, it was one of _those _places…wink-wink, nudge-nudge. And how did Heather find out about The Red-Ring Inn?

…

It was about a year ago. Consequently, it was also about a year after Dad was stabbed in his sleep. (Cowardly asshole couldn't face Dad while he was awake. Real nice, huh?) While Heather was at the farmer's market to buy some fruit on sale, somebody mentioned some place called The Red-Ring Inn. The two guys talking about the place chuckled before moving away among the farmers' carts. And the name of the place just stuck in her mind. The _Red-Ring Inn, _a place with a name like that just wouldn't quit being remembered.

Curiosity and boredom one slow Thursday night prompted Heather to look that place up in the phone book, which was under that busted TV in the living room. Yes, the girl kept a paper phone book under a damaged electrical appliance. Keeping paper materials next to broken electrical appliances was maybe a fire hazard—like her one-time habit of keeping her bedroom heater next to the curtains before her landlord got on her for that. Did Heather remember to unplug that TV before leaving the apartment last, by the way? Ah well! Too late now. Her apartment was a whole damned universe away... Or was that _three?_ A person can lose count of little things like universes. And maybe if the girl made it back from this little jaunt, _maybe _there would finally be willpower enough to lug that big busted boob-tube out to the dumpster for pickup.

Heather found the ad—phone number and all—for the place. It was identified as a _gentleman's club, _and then the ad's text rambled on about all the fine features of the place without really telling about what goes on there—as if a person knew what a gentleman's club really was.

Why do they call them gentlemen's clubs when anybody but gentlemen go there? A _gentleman's club _nowadays is one of _those_ places—strong emphasis on _those_. Throw in a lecherous wink for good measure when saying it too. (Wide-eyed realization dawns as one understands. _Oh, one of tho-o-o-se places!_)In this case, the ah…_gentleman's club _would be where a bunch of drunk nasty guys go to see tired and probably drugged-up women get up on a stage and get indecent to really lousy music. And if the guys there aren't drunk, from the start they _will _be…after consuming the necessary number of watered-down drinks required to hang around and see the show. A little more entertainment of a more personal nature could be had—no doubt—within the rented rooms which were also available. In short, the Red-Ring Inn was nothing less than _a freakin' strip joint and whore-house_.

_Was _or _is_, present-tense or past-tense? In this reality, Heather supposed that would be _was _since the Red-Ring Inn of this reality would probably have been taken over by psychotic zombie-midget creatures from wherever they came from. Those freaks would probably then rename the place after one of their crazy space-dimension gods or whatever, who in turn probably had a name that sounded like a synthetic fabric or a character out of some cornball fantasy novel. The _Red-Ring Inn _would therefore have become _Dacron's House of Carnal Delights _as managed by those freaks from somewhere else.

There was no particular reason for Heather to call and further her investigation into this Red-Ring Inn because the ad pretty much told what the place was. Screw it. Heather called anyway.

Why? Hell, why not? The mathematics of the situation were like this. Heather was eighteen years old. Eighteen is six times three... Six, six, six, which makes it the _perfect _age for a skinny blonde girl in jeans and tank-top to get down to doing some _deviltry_. (Blue jeans, it's always blue jeans—always _a la mode _for young rebels everywhere in the world, probably in _any _world.) If that wasn't all, any sixty-year-old will tell you, _boredom _plus _teenager _equals _shenanigans_. _Boredom _was in Heather's apartment. _Heather _was the teenager at the infinitely wise age of eighteen years. _Shenanigans _would come in the form of the before-mentioned calling the gentleman's club (strip joint) to see what's shakin' besides pairs of bared human mammaries.

The call was fun…at first. That guy at The Red-Ring Inn gentleman's club (wink-wink!) had this whole _hiya babe _attitude on the phone. Heather gave a _hi _in response and started talking some other crap in greeting. All the while was this loud _chika-wa-waa _music in the background and lots of screaming guys going _whoo-hoo. _Now, was this call _about a gig_?If so, he said that Heather…_sounds kinda sexy… _(_Whoo-hoo! Chika-wa-waa!_)

Then it was suddenly _not _fun anymore. Not that Heather seriously thought of working at the Red-Ring Inn, but the girl knew that they probably actually went for _sexy _people at that place because they wanted _sexy_. Heather kept herself in shape and didn't eat much (if eating much at all), so being on the slender side wasn't a problem. It was just this whole thing about sexy versus cute. When a girl is tall and long and elegant of body and somehow with big round boobs big as her head despite everything else being skinny, a girl is _sexy. _When a girl is short yet skinny, that makes her _cute. _People said that Heather was cute, not sexy…and _that's not fair! _

While the guy was in mid-rant about what was expected of the _sexy _girls who worked there, Heather _slammed _the phone down on its plastic cradle. And _that _was the end of that particular night of boredom. At least the girl wasn't bored anymore. Anger is always good at getting rid of one's, shall we say, _ennuie. _ _N'est-ce pas?_

There Heather stood, staring angrily at the only phone in her apartment and doing her damnedest to _not go grab a pipe and go out to bust somebody's head open_. Go down to the Red-Ring Inn and just start swingin'. That would certainly give _them _a night to remember—sexy or not!

...

2.

…

That was then, and this is now. This wasn't night-time. This was day-time, if only just barely. The infamous fog of this _screwed-up town _didn't let a person see the sky above to see where the sun was, but sunset-toned light cast a glow to the fog. It must be around sunset by now. Or was it always? Funny thing, sunlight still having sunset tones like that... The girl wasn't wearing a watch for once but just knew that they were here for a goodly while now. It was sunset when they first got here and dealt with the survivors—who weren't _survivors _anymore by the way. And it was still sunset. Sunsets just aren't supposed to last this long. Not only that, but the way the soft orange-ish tones shone through the fog and didn't change, that was still a little unsettling, like something was wrong with the rotation of the planet to make day-to-night cycles extra-long.

Only if they were on some extreme parts of Earth would that make sense. The girl read about how places near the North and South poles have really long sunsets. Some countries are even in day-to-night cycles for months due to how the Earth tilted those parts of the world almost completely away from the sun.

But those extreme parts of the world are supposed to be extra-cold and extra-snowy. This place was extra-warm and extra-foggy. Heather's outfit was just fine for it, too. Janice had on that long black jacket of hers…along with a short-skirted leather dress so tight that it must cut off circulation. It must be a bother, wearing something like that in muggy weather—not that the short girl gave a damn about how Janice was feeling anyway. (Thought Heather, _Ha-ha! I hope you suffocate in that outfit._) The Janitor's long-sleeved shirt and coveralls probably weren't much better. Neither of them seemed to mind.

But this was only her earthly interpretation of things. Maybe long sunsets were normal for this world. Her sense of _normal _was _abnormal. _Therefore, all weird-people from planet Earth—Heather's planet Earth—can take their wrong-headed understandings of time and space and stuff 'em where the sun doesn't shine! To those from this world or reality, this was normal just as eaters of dog-flesh would consider animals like your pet Fido to be worthy of fine dining in the greatest of restaurants.

_Whatever, _thought Heather. _No point in arguing against reality, is there? Whatever reality we're in, that is. _

Someone or something gave an almost-human chuckled from an alleyway, from the right. It could have been a human being, a survivor who just lost his or her mind. Losing one's mind, now that's a big problem because a person can't exactly pick that sort of thing back up at the lost-and-found. (_Um, excuse me… I lost my mind in Dimension X or Planet Dorkatron, one of those other places. Did one of your Janitors happen to pick it up?_) Or that chuckle could have been someone or something that lost his or her humanity and had become something else. Having lost its mind or its humanity—if it was human to begin with—the source of that chuckle had better not try anything stupid. If anything posed a threat, the standard-operating procedure for this group was simple as sandwiches: Kill.

The girl gave a tired glance to the Janitor, then to Janice. As usual, the Janitor had that calm, cool-as-anythinglook on that lean-jawed tan face of his—calm as anyone probably with a Native American upbringing. Come to think of it, Janice could use some of the Janitor's color. Heather wouldn't have even guessed that a person could be that pale and still be alive. Heather thought of herself as having an even and perfectly acceptable peaches-and-cream sort of complexion…or not so even because her skin tended to get freckly when it got too sunny.

Swarthy stoic killer-hero Janitor on one hand, goth-pale witch-girl on the other, both of them just so calm in this situation. What a pair they'd make! Heather imagined that if those two tied the knot, the result would be a household of skinny kids who had a knack for fixing stuff and scaring the Hell out of the neighbors. That's right. The Janitor would tie the nuptial knot…right around his own neck, marrying a girl who was pale as death and had just as cold an attitude to boot.

"_Hwugh-hugh-hug-g-g!_" repeated the chuckling thing from before. This time it was behind a parked car—before jumping out into plain view. And what a view it was. Thing was a freakin' _monster_. Monsters are ugly, and this thing only furthered the rule.

…

How something that big and that freaky could hide behind a car was a wonder of wonders. The creature itself was a wonder. That creature was wearing what looked like an oversized choir-cape or something over its big fat round body—a body topped with something like sixteen heads arranged like hairy, ball-shaped blossoms on a tree-limb. A great big pair of fur-covered legs coming from beneath the draping cloth-covered round body kept the whole thing upright and mobile.

Heather stopped and went slack-jawed. _Like, wow!_ The girl had seen some really messed-up jokers in her nineteen years, but that dude takes the cake! The creature had to be a dude and not a dude-ette because there weren't any tits on that thing. Hells no, there'd better _not _be. Besides, a dude-ette wouldn't let her legs get hairy—at least _that _hairy. Heather's own questionably human ancestry somehow meant that leg-hair wasn't a problem for her, but most girls…most _normal _girls, they had to…well, _shave_. As in, shave their lower-limbs. That creature over there just didn't need just a simple shave for its legs. That sucker needed an industrial-strength _weed whacker _powered by about six nuclear-powered turbine-generators connected by overhead power-cables to get those gams presentable—even for a dude. Any hairier and it may as well be called fur. That was one furry dude, then. But since it had _sixteen _heads and all, wouldn't that make it _dudes—_in plural—instead of the singular _dude? _ If a two-headed baby gets born, don't they count it as two people? No, they'd count it as one because doctors have the habit of lopping off extra heads and limbs—at least that being the practice on the Planet Earth that Heather knew. The doctors of that thing's world let it keep all its extra heads. It could be because the doctors of that world could have noggins to spare themselves.

Right now, just one of the creature's heads was looking in this direction. The rest of the heads were looking around like they weren't really sure of what in tarnation was going on here. If it helps any (though it probably wouldn't), the heads not paying attention had lots of little blisters on them. Only the most unmarked head seemed most alert.

That relatively zit-free head in the middle chuckled again, its voice sounded like an alternate-reality version of Chuckles the Clown. "_Hwugh-hugh-hugh-hug-g-g!_" Too bad the rest of the thing's heads weren't feeling up to chiming in and sharing some goofy joy. If so, with enough face-paint and green wigs, those heads could have acted like a whole one-body circus—saving up cash to go to medical school, becoming that one-stop surgical team probably swimming in the dreams of medical insurance accountants.

"Oh dear goodness, what have we here?" said Janice aloud, also perusing the wonder of wonders which stood before them. Her eyes rested upon the thing. "It seems that we have a rather interesting obstacle to our progress, if not a specimen. It shall not be one for overly long however!"

Then came wet tearing sounds as the wondrous creature was suddenly _being ripped to pieces_. Blister-faced heads were yanked off and tossed, going _shr-r-rip _when their necks were separated and going _clunk _when the heads themselves hit the street or the sidewalk, depending on the toss. The two big legs holding up the big round body tried to get a move-on but were yanked off as easily as one yanks hairy drumsticks off of a holiday-time roasted beast. Gosh, the unseen servants were really strong, able to pull off those steroid-looking monster-legs like that. Yeah buddy! Look at those invisible guys go to work on that monster…! Or, don't look—because one _can't _look, not able to see the beings that did the deed. If a person could look at and _see _the unseen servants, then they wouldn't be _unseen _anymore, right?

Right!When it was over, boy-oh-boy, was it over. The unseen servants did a damn-damn-_damned _good job in tearing apart the ugly multiple-headed thing. Parts of the monster were just _everywhere_. Some of those parts were twitching, but it wasn't like the creature was going to slap itself back together again and come hobbling back for revenge. That sort of thing only happened in horror movies, not with real-life monsters.

This was indeed as simple as sandwiches! Deciding to kill monsters is as easy as slapping two slices of bread around a piece of meat—_dead _meat. _Let's recite this rule one more time, _thought Heather. _If it gets in the way, kill it_. _Kill 'em all. _

So went her contemplation as this group of killers walked around the round smattering of scattered body parts of a potential multi-headed circus-creature saving up to become a one-bodied surgical team from Dimension X. Walking 'round was only appropriate since the creature used to be pretty _round _itself. (Get it? Get it! Ha-a-ah!) Now its body was even more round, not having limbs or heads anymore to ruin the gigantic meat-ball shape.

Heather was feeling sick. Those feelings then could have been a delayed side-effect of the radiation-resistance stuff the Janitor injected her with earlier, or maybe it was a lingering effect of just being back in this town again. Yet a more immediate explanation for her feeling a wee bit queasy came out of seeing what happened to round-boy here. Whatever it was, Heather was feeling not too right.

All this, it couldn't be right. See the wonders of the world—of _other _worlds—and make 'em dead as donkey poop. Kill the monsters, kill the monsters, _kill the monsters!_ Kill, kill, and kill some more. Kill 'em and grill 'em—fried 'till they died.

Yes! Come to Silent Hill and _kill _all the monsters you want for free! And unlike most offers of this sort with the adjective _free _attached, there was none of that _while supplies last _nonsense because Silent Hill always has monsters to spare. For every malformed, messed-up, shambling freak that a person kills, there are always at least _six more _malformed, messed-up shambling freaks to take their place. There are plenty of freaks for everyone: hobbling, crawling, galloping or even flying around and absolutely _begging _to get killed. So if one wants to have a good time in slaughtering things wondrous and strange, just come on down to Silent Hill, this _screw-w-wed-up town! _No purchase necessary. Participants _need not _be 19 years or older. See your local trans-dimensional Janitor for details.

…

3.

…

_Some way, some how, some other time…that little radio sat on a surface that looked a lot like a desk. Dim as this place was, a person could still see what was there to be seen. Dimness unto darkness was business as usual. _

_The truth was, that particular piece of furniture in the gloom wasn't _really _a desk. Oh, not at all. That was no more a desk than the so-called bus driver was really a bus driver on a bus—driving a highways-riding bus. Nope, that bus-driver wasn't really just a bus-driver, and that really wasn't just a radio. That really wasn't _just _a radio—able to pick up broadcasts from other worlds. But as usual, it was acting like a radio being because…ladies and gentlemen, it's time for another Silent Hill Radio Moment! _

_Static hissed out from its little speaker to fill this dim and darkened place with static-sound, vibrating the surface of the desk while vibrating the air. This static faded out as a nice guy's voice went, "Two-o-o, three-e-e four," followed by the easy-going strum of a folksy Irish-sounding country guitar. Then the nice man began singing..._

_The Shan-kill butchers ride toni-i-ight!_

_You'd better shut your win-dows tight!_

_They're sharpening their cleavers and their kni-i-ives!_

_And they're taking…all their whiskey…by the pint!_

'_Cause everybody knows_

…_if you don't_

…_m-i-i-i-ind your mo-o-other's words!_

_A wick-ed wind_

…_will blo-o-w_

…_your ri-i-bons from your curls! _

_Everybody moan._

_Everybody shake!_

_The Shan-kill butchers want to cut you…away…_

_They used to be just like me and you-u-u._

_They used to be sweet little boys!_

_But something went hor-r-ribly askew._

_Now killing…is their only…source of joy!_

'_Cause everybody knows_

…_if you don't_

…_m-i-i-i-ind your mo-o-other's words!_

_A wick-ed wind_

…_will blo-o-w_

…_your ri-i-bons from your curls! _

_Everybody moan._

_Everybody shake._

_The Shan-kill butchers wanna cut you…away…_

_After that, the radio-which-really-wasn't-just-a-radio just up and decided it had played plenty enough. Too bad, so sad, the radio had other things in mind besides telling everything—letting all words out of its seemingly battery-powered electric mouth. It had to keep _some _things secret at least. Besides, anybody who heard just those lyrics was likely smart enough to figure out what the radio was _really _saying.__. _

…

That big blocky gray building of one Heather's destination and another Heather's imprisonment was deep within the foggy expanse of downtown. Well, it _used _to be downtown because all of those big-time money-making doctors (and money-making nurses) had to find _some _way to cut loose after work. So what they did was go out to the clubs, go to the restaurants, go out and do things, spreading around that cash they got for fixing up living folks and squirting preservatives into the dead ones. But that was when there were _human _doctors running the show. Now that place was under new management—the management of the unseen presence.

Since the unseen presence doesn't even pay its doctors, those downtown places of grown-up fun were completely abandoned of human patronage. Most of the creatures that went into those downtown areas were interested in killing humans instead of getting piss-drunk. Wa-hey, why not? Killing is what monsters do for kicks. Even if those silly meat-puppet humans can't appreciate that, at least _somebody _was having a good time in the downtown area—even if those _somebodies _weren't from this world.

Inside the big blocky hospital-prison itself, the other Heather wasn't having a good time. That's for sure. It must be because of her being human, at least looking human. Human, hah! _Since when _can human beings cause electrical appliances to get screwy just by walking past them? And since when do human beings hurt others just by thinking about it? The townsfolk didn't just have her locked up there because they had a thing against short, skinny nineteen-year-old girls with saucy attitudes. That attitude. Her foster father really ought to have kept her in line. Goodness knows what her biological parentage really was, crazy lesbo witch-girl…

No way was this going to be the end of her life. "_I'm not done_," mumbled Heather. "_Not done yet…_" The girl heard something like the grumbling of an engine or some kind of animal. That noise was coming from behind the walls. "That's right. Get grumpy if you want. It's not gonna stop my help from coming."

In a temper-tantrum response, the unseen presence…_shook the room. Snarling and savage sounds ripped through the air. This bed began to quiver. The lights flick-flickered while pounding came from the walls and the floor. Something began clomping around the ceiling as if walking around upside-down. The unseen presence wasn't just plain-old grumpy. Hells no. That dude was pissed. _

It's not just enough to be pissed-off angry. In some cases, this feeling comes out of an idea of being pissed-_on_—as if everybody in the world uses oneself for a toilet. This wasn't the case for what was stirring within the dark, industrial depths of the hospital-prison building. This thing was angry just because it was being _born _angry.

The anger was beginning to seep into the air. It was beginning to overwhelm Heather. Heather, feeling sick, feeling dizzy, it was getting to be…_too much. Lights flickered on and off as the noise overcame everything. This went on as the girl felt darkness close over. Hello darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again…_

…

_Things were happening in a hot square industrial room. It was just so dim in here, just some blood-colored lights attached to the rust-metal walls providing crimson illumination. So dark, so hot, the heat baked out from the big strange engine-machine in a corner—the big-strange machine attached to the floor and nearby wall with pipes that slushed with a dark fluid that came from somewhere else. The dark fluid slushed through pipes and into…_the big engine.

The big engine was really working now. Something was happening here—something _big. _And those little midget-dudes in the coveralls were here to help things along. They had some notion that this helping was going to cost them more than a little bit, but they didn't care. Hells no, they didn't care! Those little assholes didn't give a rat's fart in a breeze about what was going to happen to even themselves so long as it served the great purpose.

"_Elkric, ne'smirk!_" squealed one of the wrinkle-faced little guys in rust-stained coveralls as it pulled a big lever. It was an _ugly _face on an _ugly _little guy. Then again, _all _of those little guys were ugly. And every single one of the little guys wore coveralls with patches of rust-powder. "_Ne'smirk, hobble-de-hoy!_"

"_Noit'pes-nok! Ne'smirk,!_" squealed another one of the ugly little men in rust-stained coveralls, a creature standing by a circular wheel-dial set in the wall. That one was no uglier than the other who pulled that lever. Maybe the only difference between those two was a different pattern of rust stains on his nasty little coveralls. _Nasty _little coveralls on _nasty _little guys, _nasty _little thoughts in their _nasty _little heads… Indeed, this was one great big happy nasty-fest going on down here in this hot little dimly lit room.

Not all of the midget-creatures were at the strange machine itself. Three of them were doing something with some rather high-voltage wiring in a corner of this room—thick-fingered hands tugging and stroking the thick rubbery electrical cables. Another one of the creatures was standing atop what looked like a metal plate bolted to the floor…which really wasn't just a metal plate. Well whatever, it _looked _like a metal plate and that was as good enough an explanation as to what the thing was. Not so readily explainable was why that dude was standing there and dancing.

"_Hobble-de-hoy, ne'smirk elkric!_" cheered the midget-creature standing by the circular wheel-dial as one of its nasty little comrades began hobbling over to here. Then _other _midget-creatures started hobbling over in the same direction. They were going to get somebody and get him good_. _

Some of them used their _nasty _little hands to grab the guy's _nasty _little ankles. When it comes to these guys, what other kinds of actions and limbs are there other than the _nasty _kind? Then, some other little guys started grabbing on the back of the guy's coveralls. In this way, a lot of little guys had a lot of their hands on him as they _hoisted _him above their heads and proceeded to carry him bodily towards the big metal front of the strange machine.

The strange machine opened up. Thick metal squeals resonated as two armor-plated flaps _ya-w-w-w-ed _open into the absolutely dark depths of the machine itself. One could hear heavy clanking and thrumming sounds from within the darkness of the machine, but one couldn't actually see what was going on in there. What was in there, gnashing gears and heavy electric-motors? Maybe there were some piston-rods? It was just too dark to tell. There being just dim red lighting in this room didn't make an inspection any damned easier.

What _was _inside of the strange machine? Well, the little guy being lifted up was going to find out soon enough! One…two…three!Alley-_oop_, they threw that little guy—nasty little coveralls and all—feet-first into the strange machine.

The machine promptly began making louder noises mixed in with some wet tearing and chomping sounds. If that little man made any last-minute squealing noises as he had an appropriately nasty little end to his _nasty _little life, it was all lost in the gnashing and the thrashing of the wheels and squeals within the strange machine.

That done, they grabbed the back and ankles of another one of their comrades and tossed _him _into the machine. Well, some of them weren't going to let themselves face the indignity of having to be thrown. They can throw _themselves _in, thank-you-very-much. One by one, they began climbing into the machine—grabbing the lower edge of the opening and pulling themselves up, tumbling head-first into the darkness of the open machine. One after another, and another still, this went on until just one nasty little guy was left. Then he was up and gone too…

The strange engine-machine kept up its loud squealing and clanking as nasty little men went into the open mechanical maw. After a while, it quieted down as a carnivorous beast would after finishing a satisfying meal. It was going nearly silent save the thrum coming from high-voltage electrical stuff in the walls.

Then this engine-machine started back up again. Thick wet sounds mixed in with the thrumming of electromechanical works as _something _was being made in there, being…_born_. As for the consumption of those little guys in coveralls, anybody will explain it by saying pregnancy makes for very strange tastes.


	19. Chapter 19

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection (by Elliot Bowers) Chapter 19

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 19

…

1.

...

As the dark churnings in the basement resonated throughout the hospital-prison, Heather wasn't feeling too good—lying in bed, feeling sicker than usual, looking sicker than that. Just the sight of her would make a health-care professional run away to put on a hazardous materials suit. Anybody less than a professional would have just run plain away.

It was her skin. Something was wrong with it. Her legs bared almost indecently so, her arms also exposed, one could see dark spots swimming beneath the surface of her flesh. They looked like bloody circles or flat-leeches…or _something. _

Before, the unseen presence just couldn't seem to get through to the girl. All of those injections and infusions delivered by the doctor-things just weren't working. And when Heather started able to kill off those doctor-things and nurse-monsters by just thinking about it, sending in the clowns to do one's dirty work just didn't seem to be working_. Now _it was working. _Now _Heather was in for it. Hells yeah…

It was hard to breathe, even harder to move. All the sass in her attitude was pretty much used up at this point. No more smart-ass commentary, no more attitude, no way was the girl going to talk trash with her body feeling so wasted. The girl had the idea that this was probably going to be it. It left her feeling just a little scared.

Deep within herself, her mind floating in fevered delirium, the girl really wasn't afraid as much as a person would suppose. Dying wasn't going to be so bad after all of this. Dad was dead. Mom was dead before that. And a look outside the barred hospital window would show that an awful lot more people than that were also gone with the wind, gone with the sin...

Why _not _die? Dying, as in kicking the bucket, taking a dirt-nap, biting the dust, buying the farm, the long sleep… Hell, _everybody _does it. That would therefore make dying the most fashionable thing in the world—in _any _world. And right about now, dying was both fashion and sport as most people out there were probably hunted down by those messed-up monsters.

Fashion-sense wasn't the real reason why Heather had this go-with-the-flow attitude towards her own slow death. No, it was because it wasn't as if the girl was a total stranger to taking the long nap. People are deathly afraid (_heh_) of unknown things, and the real reason why a lot of folks had the shakes and shimmies about _kicking the bucket_ was because they just didn't know what would happen. In a world where hard-core scientists and politicians deny the existence of everything from aliens to zombies, people have been brainwashed into thinking that this life was the only life, this world being the only world, no afterlife at all. You live, you work and…you guessed it, die. Boom-boom, out go the lights. The End! Roll the credits…

Not so with Heather. Nope, this wasn't exactly the first time that the girl went through the shuffling drama known as human life. Heather actually did have another existence before this one. According to the rules, everybody is supposed to have one existence—one play-through. Live, work and die… But whoever said that Heather ever followed all the rules?

To say that her situation was _complicated _and leave it at that would be a cop-out. It was also just too easy to say that Heather died once and then got herself born again. Most of the memories of her past-life were sort of lost in the sauce of reincarnation, but Heather was still _Heather_—even if a past-life meant being called _Alessa. _

…

2.

…

Alessa was such a beauty—a slender beauty, a long pale body with an elegant face atop a graceful neck, offset with long dark hair. Everything about her was long and sleek and just so beautiful. A girl with a name like that simply was not complete without a dreamy name like _Alessa_, a name that can be said with a sigh. _Ah, Alessa… Sigh-h-h… _Sweet beautiful Alessa. Why would anybody wish for such a sweet beauty to die? That's because her life wasn't that sweet. Alessa, so exquisite and wonderful to look at, her life was not so pretty.

It started with her mother. Armchair psychologists and geeky fanboys of Freud would shake their head at this and say, _Doesn't it always… _Her mother was a witch. This was not, by the way, a more polite way of saying Alessa's mother was a _bitch. _(Well, the mother was that too.) Nastier words abound for women who are of less-than-amenable personality. A lot of those words are best not said in polite company. But in this case, this mother probably deserved a heapin' helpin' of nasty words in any language—earth-based language or otherwise—applied aplied to her. Add to that how Alessa's mother really _was _a bona-fide witch—for real.

No, Alessa's mother didn't ride a broomstick and didn't own a black cat or any of that silly crap. But who the fork needs a feline or the ability to go Airbus with an implement of housecleaning when one has real-life magical powers? Alessa's mother could make stuff happen without appearing to be directly responsible. Making voices come to somebody in the middle of the night, talking of things only dead people would know about, getting together with some buddies to make the weather get screwy… Alessa's momma could do _all _that. No problem. One can't say _no sweat _because some of the efforts took at least a little perspiration.

Alessa was a child in America. And like all children in that country which is loved and hated throughout this world and others, all children must go to school up to a certain age as required by the laws. The laws require that all children attend institutions where they must sit patiently at desks. This traditionally means having hard-working and barely paid teachers instruct them in the ways of reading, writing and 'rithmatic. (All other aspects of various instructional curricula are subject to every year as politicians look for things to yell about and change around election time—always changing, just like the tax code.) Land of the free, home of the brave, America was a land where boys will be boys, children will be children. And…oh, _how_ _children can be so cruel. _

The children were just being kids when at school, doing the bare minimum required to scrape by with their grades. They did the minimum amount of work required to keep from absolutely flunking. And come the late afternoons, they goof off and clown around every chance they get, shooting wet spitballs with plastic straws from the lunchroom and passing nasty notes and giggling and doing everything else they aren't supposed to be doing. At the same time, there was the occasional goody two-shoes who pulled high grades with surprising regularity—which made them highly irregular.

Alessa had things badly both ways. Being a brainiac, a quiet person and a weirdo was a triple whammy for the girl. Her mother's strictly religious ways caused the girl to come to school buildings every day with a serious mindset. School had its demands for the mind, but the ways of her mother's religion and its followers were demanding mentally and spiritually. It was this dark discipline which allowed her to obey the instructions given by the teachers. Most other children were into doing whatever it was they did, but Alessa sat there primly and with a stoicism not quite befitting someone her age. Additionally, her white-collared dark dresses and dark hair framing her face of sun-deprived ghostly complexion gave her an almost nun-like bearing.

The other kids couldn't stand it! They couldn't stand a girl like _Alessa—_all prim and pretty _and _getting good grades to boot. Like hyenas on the sun-baked plains of the sub-Sahara, those little sharp-mouthed scavengers made quite sure that their giggly, poorly written behind-the-back notes especially had Alessa as the subject matter. While school-day spitballs were (eventually) kept to a minimum, they nevertheless made sure that their hatred of Alessa was known through other means—such as scribbles on her desk.

Though the school teacher and facilities maintenance people did what they could to clean Alessa's desk, they could not fix the damage being done to the girl's state of mind. Her mother likely would not have gone along with any of that sort of fixing or any sort of fixing pertaining to Alessa. Children must be brought up properly. Spare the rod and spoil the child, and Alessa was _not _to be spoiled.

Such was how things began and continued throughout Alessa's foreshortened life—lost in a darkened past of time and suffering, growing darker as that past existence went on. The hatred continued beyond junior high-school while children are allegedly growing into maturity. Doing so seems to fuel _immaturity _as the intensity of the hatred for Alessa continued into the earliest years of high school itself. Oh, the kids were smarter…somewhat. It was just that they were smarter in the pranks and prodding of those who were just not normal. Alessa was not normal.

Never mind that Alessa was flowering into beauty and elegance in both body and mind. While others her age were taking their first hits of mind-altering substances, flirting with the law and doing the sorts of things which would lead to more than a few out-of-wedlock pregnancies, that was not Alessa's way. The young woman was still set in her prim ways. The abuse was borne in a seemingly quiet way—her serious eyes simply taking in the hatred. Yet it only seemed as if Alessa was accepting all of this, staying so quietly beautiful…

Appearances deceive. All of that hatred was having its effects. As Alessa's peers continued their incessant and spiritually destructive ways upon her and others, it just kept going in and going in, damaging her spirit even as her body continued to exist. Behind those soulful dark eyes of hers, the beautiful girl was suffering.

A metaphor to this would be how toxic wastes from old-time factories used to get poured into lakes and the air and the ground as if nothing was wrong with doing that. Hey, another sixty barrels of poly-chloro-something-or-other dumped into the lake? Another sixty thousand words of hatred for Alessa? Who gives a damn. Everything's just hunky dory, dudes!

Now the thing to remember was that Alessa wasn't like normal people. Being a witch, Alessa's mother could do things with her mind. And since dear sweet Alessa was borne of momma… Well, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, as the saying goes. Alessa grew up in momma's hardcore-religious household and all of its darkly strict ways. The girl developed physically as well as spiritually. Alessa could do all the strange things that her mother could do even if Alessa didn't necessarily like all of it. In fact, living a life of darkness and pain, the girl could do some of those things even better than momma and the other followers of the religion. It was like Alessa was _born_ to do that. In some respects, that was the truth.

Into high school, things began happening to some of the kids who poured some of that toxic hate into Alessa's life. Some of those classmates started having runs of very bad luck and had the habit of ending up sort of…_dead_. Oh, it would _seem _like they died due to all the sorts of stupid crap that kids died doing. Maybe some of them _seemed _to have had a little too much to drink. It _seemed _as if they decided to play weekend-night games of _chicken _without the benefit of decent driving skills or drivers' licenses for that matter. And just maybe it _seemed _that some of them died in their sleep due to the effects of substances people aren't legally allowed to have in this land of freedom and democracy.

Those were just the official explanations that went down on paper. Local police and the coroner's office just shrugged shoulders before putting down the official and legal-beagle reasons for those high-school kids just dying. Causes of death were the usual for kids that age. And just maybe it was best for everyone to keep the explanations that way. Just look at that story in the newspaper… Jane and Jimmy died while drag-racing down a night-darkened highway to Paleville. Let that be a lesson to all you _other _kids who are thinking of doing the same.

The police heard rumors. Rumors, like how a lot of those dead kids having been somehow connected to some skinny girl raised under the ways of a strict religious sect. But since that girl would be at home most of the time and miles away from the places of death, there was no physical evidence whatsoever making the real connections. No sane member of the law-enforcement community could pin anything on her. What, so a so-called witch-girl was killing off the classmates who said the wrong things about her? What's next, midget-creatures from Planet Gleepatron? No? How about flying dino-monsters from Dimension X? If that's not your cup of rum-laced tea, how abut everybody's good-old standby—that of flying saucers? Yup, the girl's a super-psychic alien, allowing her to kill humans just by thinking about it like that old movie where all the kids fit the blonde-haired Nazi ideal and had powers to that effect. Gosh-golly, it all makes _perfect sense now! _Write it up, send it down to the boys at state police HQ, and get ready for a promotion because that's some _fi-i-i-ine _police-work. Or get ready to be locked up in the crazy house with all the other nutcases for believing all of that.

Alessa wasn't thrown in the loony bin. The girl eventually did die in a hospital, though—locked up and kept away in a rather secret part of a hospital run by that religious sect. Though pretty and prim Alessa did the best a girl could in her circumstances, life was just not playing fair. Life isn't fair. Fairness is just a human construction in a universe where humanity is just a bunch of meat-puppets capable of chopping up some rocks and mixing it with water in the construction of their so-called _buildings. _In that past life, Alessa died in darkness and loneliness, just before most of the town was killed off itself, just as the people of the hospital killed Alessa.

The world changed since that past life of Alessa's. All kinds of government agencies are around to keep tracks of everybody and everything—generally reducing the disappearances of young women into hidden hospital rooms. Anti-bullying laws have long since gone into affect ever since verbally abused high-school children began bringing firearms and shooting up the place. In the meanwhile, Alessa was dead.

And then Heather was born. The dark memories of that lost life came back to Heather in this new life, carried into this new life. Maybe the spiritual toxicity of the hatred carried over—the hatred of other children for her and what could be considered _abuse _by her mother. With remembrance of those past burdens also came Heather's abilities, awakened against her will.

…

So went and wandered Heather's blurred and bleary mind, a fever-dream that swayed itself through her once-lost memories… There was maybe something wrong with remembering what ought not be remembered just as something was especially wrong with being able to do things just by thinking about them. It's all coming back.

The flip-side of this all could be that Heather couldn't have had a past life because past lives and reincarnation are just myths. Those hard-core scientists and politicians get together on Thursday nights, get drunk on cocktails and talk about how reincarnation is just one of those goofball myths cooked up by coked-up new-age hippies as so they can sell that mystic crap in their hippie witch-shops—selling those self-help guide books, channeling stones and herbal drink-remedies. Herbal remedies, snake oil, whatever! Call 'em _energy drinks _and claim that they can cure _anything_ from abrasions to concussions. And those books they sell in those stores, what the heck are those things about? They had some high-flyin' titles like, _Restore Your True Self in Twenty-One Easy Steps _or _The Channeler's Guide to The Heavens _and all that dream-crystals stuff—put on the bookstore shelf right next to tales about ghosts, Big Foot, the Bermuda Triangle.

The bookstore that Heather worked at—as well as the other bookstore the _other _Heather worked at—didn't sell herbal remedies or dream-crystals. However, the bookstore _did _sell plenty of books on alternate realities, reincarnation, witchcraft, all of that stuff _everybody _knows to be crazy. Only _crazy _people believe phony and nonexistent because only _crazy _people believe in that.

Yeah, it would be nice it this was all one great big crazy trip, wouldn't it? Heather's blurred vision gave her means enough to take in sight of the ceiling as dark spots swam through. The ceiling was now a dimly lit region above that was faintly hazed in reddish orange. It wasn't orange-red because there was more blood in the color. Maybe her vision was messed up.

It'd go something like this. Maybe her idea of the color could be so off that the ceiling was actually psychiatric-ward white. Those doctor-things and nurse-monsters could _really _be honest-to-goodness health-care workers who were doing their darnedest to deal with some crazy girl who had lost her mind to deceptions and perceptions of alternate realities and reincarnation. While her lunacy made her see nasty demon-foods and hear voices, those could just be hallucinations. _Ri-i-i-ght…_

This was real enough for her. When a person is in a dream, the dream itself is the reality. Make that a nightmare in this case. (Bartender, make mine a double-shot of evil with a Bloody Mary for a chaser.) People are supposed to _wake up _from nightmares. People can also hopefully _wake up _from most kinds of madness. Even if they can't, psychiatrists are always too glad to ply their patients with enough antidepressants to _make _them seem awake from their nightmares—drugs used like mental painkillers to make all the hurt go away even if the underlying causes of the suffering are still there…

Hells no. Heather wasn't waking up from this. This hospital-prison was as real as the mold-spotted concrete making up its walls. This world was real—as real as that cityscape out there all hazed in sunset-tones and distant mists. A person can rant and drool all damned day long about monsters not existing, monsters not existing, monsters not existing (_fingertips in ears, I-I-I'm not he-e-earing this, blah-blah-blah_) even while monsters _do _exist in this world and others. And the monsters around here are all too glad to serve up nasty plates of trans-dimensional tuna surprise to make up one's daily repaste while they're at it.

What's the surprise about their tuna surprise? There's no tuna in it! They don't _have _tuna in Dimension X, least not the sort of creatures that humans would recognize as tuna. Now ain't _that _a bitch! Which was a bitch, not having tuna in one's happy meal or not having tuna in Dimension X? And what's the stuff _really _made out of? Don't ask. Ask no questions, and they'll tell you no lies. At least they won't lie in a language from this planet.

_They _are real, and _they _are here to stay—just as Heather was starting to think of her being here to stay. It didn't matter if her body died in this bed. This life was not the first one. Heather would just come back reborn some way, some how, just like before. And somehow, her life would just end up the same way. They would find a way to get her into a hospital where they could do things to her, using her for their plans.

_Life's a circle, _thought Heather. _It's one great big crazy dark merry-go-round… _Things that are passed once just come right back up again on the next pass. It seems to start when one gets on the carved-white plastic horse of fate. Then the electric motors get to whirring as the _oomp-pa-pa _calliope music starts going as that white-plastic horse starts bobbing up and down on a pole in what can be interpreted as an obscene motion as the ride goes underway. The ride is moving, but it's really not going anywhere different. It's going in a circle, a circle, a damned circle. Oh sure, people get off the ride of life at some point. Maybe some of them get sick and swear off ever getting on that thing again. Who can ever say that they will never ride a merry-go-round ever again? Like alcoholics who swear they'll never touch another bottle again, they do. Everything goes around in a circle. Things go around to come around, to come around, to come around… Past life, life being like crap, it ended in a hospital. This life, life being like crap, it's just about ending in a hospital. It was _just like _some damned cosmic merry-go-round. They would just keep using her again and again, come around again. And just maybe, maybe Heather (once Alessa, once somebody else probably) wouldn't have come back around any damned anymore.

Then the girl thought about that dead world outside of this hospital. Maybe they already _did _succeed this time and didn't need her as much as believed before. That could be why the doctor-things and nurse-monsters weren't around so much anymore. _That's a wrap for you, Heather-baby. You're done. _And once they were done, Heather would be done—no more coming back to the same dying nightmarish scenario in every life. It would such a relief to be dead…_for real _this time. After all, dead people don't care.


	20. Chapter 20

Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection (by Elliot Bowers) Chapter 20

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 20

…

1.

…

_Here we blow again, _thought Heather in approaching that too-familiar big blocky building in the faint mist. That building, the hospital, was huge and dominating as seen against a backdrop of a sunset-colored sky. A person could very well mistake that huge structure for any massive office-type place save the fact that it had a sign that said _Brookhavern Hospital _in humungous letters. _Brookhavern? Wasn't it supposed to be Brook_haven_? _Heather thought it to be a typo, then almost had to put some effort in remembering how alternate realities like to keep screwing around with details. If the girl was to confront approach whoever was responsible for the naming of the hospital in this reality, they'd probably say something to the effect of, _Fork your spelling, bitch! Fork your spelling and the horseless carriage you rode in on! We'll spell it Chorkumbleff next if we want! _

Brookhavern, Brookhaven, it was close enough. The building did have _hospital _in its description at least. That's what mattered. If the place was named _Gort Schocko's World-Famous Traveling Carnival of Curious Wonders, _then there'd be cause for concern.

Something else was a cause for concern. Commented the Janitor in a low voice, "All of a sudden, we got us high visibility front an' rear along the street fer a good sixty yards…exceptin' the buildings flankin' us. Ain't it the least bit suspicious the fog's almost gone around here? As suspicious as a coat-wearin' kleptomaniac in a jewelry shop, I'm thinkin'." He looked around—looking left and right—taking advantage of this extra visibility. Also true was how any potential enemies would take advantage of the fog...provided they used their eyes.

Yet the Janitor knew better. Things from other worlds didn't always use their eyes or ears to find living things to eat. That's because some of those ugly bastards didn't even have ears or eyes. Funny, despite a lack of certain sensory organs, almost all of those creatures from other worlds always managed to find the room in their physiologies to have mouths—little mouths, big mouths, teeth or no teeth, those bad boys always had something that opened, shut and could take in food. And to find food to put into those mouths, they needed some other sensory means to tell them where the next tasty morsel was standing. Some of those means of detecting food were more or less creepier than others. Even without any apparent organs of sensory input besides those of taste, there were some creatures that could sense where living prey was standing and if that prey had a mind—like how some sea animals on Earth have special sensory organs in their noses to detect the nerve signals of anything in the water. Except this wasn't water. This was open air. It was just like some kind of monster-brand telepathy and quite useful since anything with a mind was more than likely to have used that mind in being well-fed and healthy. _Humans _have minds and are surprisingly well-fed. Therefore…

"We'd best keep an eye out," said the Janitor. "Even if the things comin' after us sometimes got no eyes. Fog wouldn't be a problem for 'em if they ain't got eyes to be all covered up by the mist."

Heather was going to say something about the fog, but a sudden pain…_lanced right through her noggin, making her put hands to her forehead. "Mmm…" It was hard not to cry out, the girl pressing her lips together to keep the sound quiet. Only when the pain faded…_did the girl explain.

Said the girl, "Now I know. There's a reason why we've got less fog to deal with. I've got the feeling place is kind of like the center of a storm. Except it's not the weather kind of storm, something…mystical, I guess. It's hard to explain to somebody who doesn't follow that sort of stuff. Or _this _sort of stuff." The headache was far gone enough for the girl to give a shake of her head. "I dunno. With the center of the storm, everything is calm and stable. But the rest of the land a big distance all around can get messed up. Something like that."

"I gotcha," responded the Janitor in still looking around at this broad length of downtown street in front of the hospital. He was just looking for trouble. Still speaking in a low voice, "The other word yer really lookin' for is probably _metaphysical. _Bein' the center of the metaphysical disturbance, things ain't bad. Still, calm or not, the center of the problem ain't gonna be totally unguarded." He almost whispered, "It ain't makin' a lick o' sense. Somethin' still ain't right about all this."

Janice put hands on hips and spoke louder than anyone else, pale hands on black leather. "Oh, really! Would you two just belay your useless verbal caution this very moment! Stop thinking of your enemy in those limiting _human _terms. Our very presence is already known, so there is no need to whisper or clutter one's mind with unnecessary considerations of useless tact!"

The Janitor winced as if Janice's voice was the biggest noise in the world. For him to make any big noises this close to an enemy position went against a lot of his training. He looked to Heather, who was looking right back. "Alright," he went. "Let's talk freely. Now what? We gonna wait for a platoon fulla short-lil' bastards to come out an' throw us a welcome party? They gonna roll out the red-silk carpets an' give us free booze?" He smiled despite the danger he was feeling. "Those little guys are knee-high to fire-hydrants. No wonder why they were able to take this town, bein' so short they can probably use cracks in the street fer trenches in sneakin' around. _Heh-heh-heh… _I'm imaginin' some midget-butler guy sayin, 'The midgets will be with you shortly.' Get it? Get it! Midgets! Shortly! Aah-ha-ha-ha…! Ya can't _believe _how long I been holdin' that one back."

"Hey, cut it out! Short jokes aren't funny to everybody," said Heather, an irritated look to her face, her right hand still to her forehead. "Not everybody in the world is as tall as you are. So just…" Pain struck, then fled_. _ "_Mmmph!_" Her eyes closed, the girl swaying.

"Alright, alright," went the Janitor. "My jokes are so bad they're makin' ya sick, huh?" He looked past Heather at Janice. It was the kind of look that asked, _Now what? _Having one member of a three-member party in pain was a problem.

Moments of silence passed before Heather recovered, making a loud sniff and dabbing the back of her left wrist beneath her nose. Dark-red wet spots. _Uh oh. _A quick glimpse, and the girl brushed the back of that wrist against her jeans before anyone else could see…or her own eyes could see it any more. It didn't take a medical degree to realize what kind of trouble this could be. A headache and a nosebleed together are bad news. Having sucked in whiffs of toxic air to endanger her lungs, her veins being squirted with some weird drug from some super-polluted alternate-world that was policed by janitors (excuse that, _Janitors _with capital _J's_), being exposed to goodness knows how much bad radiation from freaky nuclear-powered machines in dark places…! What the Hell kind of health trouble was Heather getting herself into? All this maybe wasn't worth it if this was going to end with her being laid low with rotting lungs and a bloodstream that was absolutely swimming with metastasizing cancer cells.

Actually, it _was _worth it. _In for a penny, in for a pound_ goes the old saying. They had already put in too much to stop now and hadn't come all this way for just nothing. If none of this happened, if Heather hadn't undertaken the journey, then the _other _Heather would just keep causing trouble. Nobody wants freaky ghost-messages appearing out of Dimension X to fill one's diary or have weirdness-in-general happen. Nobody wants to be haunted. And when a person is haunted, they actually call it _possession. _From there, who knows? Maybe eventually, the other Heather would get so desperate as to try and take over this Heather's body completely. Bad enough how goth-girl Janice standing over there could dip into Heather's thoughts whenever. _Okey-dokey, everybody's jumping into my brain! Plenty of vacancies in here, using my head like some kinda telepathic version of Motel 6... Never mind me. I just use my brain to _think, _that's all. Nothing you all would believe important._

Sometimes-crowded head or not, this Heather turned to face the double push-doors of the gigantic hospital building. The doors were the pivoted push-type—the kind that emergency workers could shove stretchers through without having somebody waste precious seconds in waiting for somebody else to open them. Modern hospitals use automatic doors that open just from people coming close, but this place wasn't from modern times. This place was trapped in a mystical or metaphorical pocket of time and space that was decades dead and stayed that way—a place stuck in its own lost time. "Let's get this mess done with," was Heather's comment before leaning forward to…_shove open the metal doors. Uh-oh..._

_If it was possible to un-shove the doors and step back, the girl would have done so. But Heather could no more pull back than a molecule could escape the cosmic gravity well of a black hole. Black holes suck. In fact, black holes are among the hardest-sucking things in the universe. It felt as if Heather was being twisted and spun around in some way, like a sickening trans-dimensional carnival ride. Yeah, that sounds just about right. It felt like the whole damned world was suddenly mounted on a tilt-a-whirl, that gut-twisting psycho carnival ride where everything goes spinning round and round really super-fast as so centrifugal force sticks you to the wall while death-metal rock music is blasting loud as fork. Then the nutcase in the control room pulls a lever to make things extra-psycho when the whole ride starts to _tilt _in addition to whirling around a like a hundred thousand revolutions per second within the depths of the carnival night—a cosmic carnival of chaos. It tilts and whirls, get it? Hence the oh-so-subtle name Tilt-a-Whirl. Except in this case, the metaphysical Tilt-a-Whirl ride didn't have rock music. It maybe did have a nutcase in some control room somewhere—the nutcase maybe not exactly being human. _

_Within the sickening dark spinning and strangeness, something blurry and flat was rushing up at Heather in a hurry. Silly subjective human senses! Why was something rushing up at the girl when it was the girl herself who was rushing _down_?_ _ That would so happen to be the red-lit floor of the hospital foyer. There it went as Heather felt herself fade out… _

…

_Fading back in, the girl…_woke up on the dimly lit metal floor—this hospital foyer weakly illuminated by a light fixture lashed to the ceiling with barbed wire. The overhead light fixture was set in a glass or plastic casing that allowed light through, all dirty and grimy. So much grime and grit was on the thing that it kept full brightness from shining through. The dirty dim light making the rusty metal floor and walls seem grimier still. Sure, the entities and inhuman beings responsible for all this craziness can rip holes in the very fabric of reality, can summon creatures from other worlds and can even perform invasions of whole towns and areas in multiple universes. Yet they're too lazy to even give their light fixtures a good scrubbing every once in a while. Or maybe, when the abilities of one's trans-dimensional race extend beyond time and space, little stuff like housecleaning just gets in the way. Those ugly bastards probably thought themselves evolved beyond mere concerns such as cleanliness. An entire race of evil trans-dimensional entities, occasionally taking the form of malformed meat-bodies that don't get washed… Yech.

Whatever. Yes, whatever amount of bad-mouthing a person can put towards the nasty-assed housecleaning habits of the creatures and monsters and what-not, at least their hole in time and space got Heather's party to the almost-final stage in this play. They could do some pretty cool stuff even if their physical appearances were buck-ugly otherwise whenever the manifested themselves.

The transition headache was in her head for just a second before it quickly went away. It wasn't so bad this time because Heather was getting used to waking up in all the wrong places. Maybe when the girl made it back home, it would be just fine and comfortable to sleep on the kitchen floor to her as it was to sleep on a bed. While killing weird creatures and inhuman beings was starting to get on her, the girl was also getting used to certain other aspects of all this screwy craziness.

Speaking of messed-up things… No sooner had the girl got to her feet when something was absolutely _thrown _head-first through the window-curtain that separated the hospital-prison's foyer from the adjacent reception window. Wait a sec. Since when do reception offices in hospital foyers have _curtains _instead of sliding windows? These days, those sliding windows would be annealed and treated until they were bullet-proof. Curtains instead of windows, one may as well ask if other worlds had to obey the same set of silly customs and other cultural dictates believed by humans. While in the asking mood, one may also want to ask when hump-backed nurse-monsters started getting sawed-off double-barreled shotguns to deal with patients.

Sawed-off shotguns, now those things are always bad news to anybody facing the business ends of those things. It's ends in plural because some of those things have got two barrels instead of one. Bullets from pistols and rifles tend to leave more or less neatly done holes that a doctor can _maybe _stitch up—depending on where one's hit. Bullets with full metal jackets just punch right through and are easier to deal with, while hollow-point rounds will leave a hole in a person big enough to see through. But _shotguns, _those things can put a _hundred _holes in somebody. And when somebody saws off the ends of a double-barreled beast, it makes for some really crazy spread and can kill half a room with one blow. That was why sawed-off shotties are illegal where Heather comes from…. Just about as illegal as porno mags Saudi Arabia, that's how illegal.

In this case, the sawed-off held by the nurse-monster was so crusty and rusty it would be a wonder if the thing could actually fire. But… Does a person want to find out? _Are you feeling lucky, punk?_ Getting to its feet, the nurse-monster started to raise the weapon… _Well, are you?_

_The Hell you will, _thought Heather. Giving pause, the nurse-monster shook and tried again to lift the weapon. Doing so against Heather's will was giving the creature a bad case of the shakes. Indeed, the nurse-monster triedand couldn't raise the weapon. _You can't do it because I'm telling you that you can't._

Quivering and shaking, the nurse-monster squealed before dropping the weapon. That left it free for anybody to come on by and pick that thing up. Whoops, somebody's in trouble now, and it wasn't going to be a certain mall book-store employee.

Heather scooped up the sawed-off and braced the stock of the weapon against a side of her midriff in anticipation of the recoil. Both truncated barrels were now aimed at the nurse-monster. That's as if a person barely has to aim a blaster like that at all. Then the girl squeezed both triggers.

The blast was deafening in such close quarters—an explosion of smoke and an explosive spray of deadly pellets. However, the dark results were definitely worth it. The nurse-monster was blasted back a few yards. And if metric was the preference in one's world, make that a few _meters_. Yards, meters, sliggets, whatever one's planetary measure of length, suffice to say that the nurse-monster was knocked back a goodly distance. The front of the nurse's body was a mess of mutilated grayed meat that was absolutely shredded, dark fluid coating it where it laid. Then the nurse-monster was waving its gray-skinned arms all around but not moving its legs, couldn't move its legs. That was because its spinal cord was blasted out of its back… It wasn't even trying to get up or go against Heather.

No way could the nurse-monster have gone against Heather in the first place, given how Heather's abilities were returning. And no way was it getting up to do anything to anybody, anymore. "_Erch… Ergh, elkric…nosmirc_" it choked, mouth spurting droplets of the dark oily fluid these monsters seemed to have instead of blood.

Heather understood the nurse-monster's language and suddenly felt at least a little sorry for the creature. The nurse-monster wasn't the real will behind its actions. It was just doing what its master made it do.

So what the girl did next was done more out of sympathy than malice. After all, wasn't there too much killing already? If this nurse-monster was killed, its suffering would end in this world. So the girl kicked the nurse over as so it was lying chest-down, aimed the sawed-off at the nurse-monster's hump and _blasted—_the sound echoing off the metal walls_. _The nurse-monster flopped once and stopped moving after that.

Footsteps approached and stopped just out of sight around the corner which led deeper into this hospital. "Hey girl! Don't shoot me!" came a shout from around that corner—the Janitor's voice. It was better to announce one's presence than to come around the corner unannounced and get shot up with friendly fire. "Shoot the bad guys!"

Heather lowered the weapon, and then the Janitor peeked around the corner before stepping into this foyer. He looked at the sawed-off big-holed thing in Heather's hands, looked down at the nurse-monster, and knew what happened. It was easy to understand—Heather having a weapon that wasn't hers before, while the dead nurse-monster on the metal floor had no weapon now and was dead.

"Disarmin' the enemy and using its own ugly weapon to kill, that ain't too shabby!" A thoughtful pause, then he said very carefully, "Trouble is, ya just don't know the condition of that weapon. I wouldn't trust that rusty thing to fire another shot before it backfires and blows up in yer face. Who knows how long it's been since that thing's been maintained?"

Heather looked at the thing and was all too glad to put down the tool of killing. And with her abilities growing, they wouldn't have to shoot every darned thing that tried going against them. "Yeah, good point."

Came Janice's voice from behind, "I doubt if sufficient points enough have been garnered against our collective, if not abstract, enemy." Heather turned to see that goth-girl was leaning in a darkened corner of this foyer, her dark-toned lips spreading into a smile on her pale face. Janice stood away from the wall and stepped closer. "At the least, I am glad to see additional aspects of your true self returning."

"My _true self?_" asked Heather. "What, am I supposed to become a crazy killer like you, using that million-dollar vocabulary that would sent most people running for a dictionary to translate half the time? Start dressing up in all emo-black and get all pasty pale? By the way, the last time I ended up in some loony business like this? Somebody else was also talking about my so-called true self."

"What of such a person?" asked Janice with a smile. "Oh yes. Now I recall such an incident with quite a bit of clarity. That was indeed some rather foolish business on Claudia's part in my domain."

Heather's answer sounded more angry than surprised. "How the Hell did _you…_?" A sigh, then the girl continued. "Never mind. Being all mystically gifted and what-not, you probably know everything. So long as you don't start telling everyone secret stuff like where I go shopping for underwear and stuff. Did I mention that the lady you remind me of ended up being dead?"

"The glories of death are to be greatly appreciated," responded Janice, making a slow and almost ballerina-like twirl and stopping with hands clasped beneath her chin. "Ahh… Death can be _such sweet bliss!_ It is satisfying, really, if one truly understands."

Heather did that eye-rolling thing and began walking away before _somebody _got her too pissed off to stay peaceful. Came Janice's thought, _Impetuous upstart, what are you planning?_

Now that made Heather stop—hearing Janice's communicated thought. Heather communicated some words right back. _What am I thinking?_ _None of your beeswax. If you're such a hot-shot at this dark evil witchy stuff, why can't _you _figure it out…? _For good measure, Heather added, _Bitch. _

Janice glared. Unseen servants growled menacingly in reflecting the emotion of their dark-clad mistress. Heather just…walked…away…. Meanwhile, the Janitor gave Janice a glance and walked away as well in going around the corner. Was that a _smirk _on his face, a look of even the slightest derision? Oh, the vicious impietyof these fools! What other indignities would Janice endure from those beneath her status? Wrathful temper in check, Janice nevertheless walked in the same direction that the other two members of the party had gone.

Around the corner was a short length of hallway that ended with rather sturdy metal door. To the left was a wall of metal bricks that looked like nothing else of the hospital's otherwise normal architecture. Apparently, the only way to go would be through that door.

The Janitor already was on the job. With Heather watching, the man in blue work-shirt and coveralls was kneeling down and doing something to the lock in the dim light from the dirty overhead light fixtures. To the right of the door was one of those signs showing a stick-figure standing on a jagged line. _Stairs, _was what the sign meant. It was better to take the stairs instead of trusting the elevator in a situation like this anyway. Just like the sawed-off shotgun, it was maybe best to not trust anything mechanical in this place. Machines are only safe and working when they are kept in good running order. An elevator not maintained may as well be a shotgun ready to backfire.

_Click-clack! _"There ya go, baby!" went the Janitor, putting those tools into his portable kit and pocketing it all. He then pushed the door open. "Broken locks ain't a problem."

_Like, no way_, thought Heather. _Yes way._ The Janitor had just opened a door that shouldn't be able to open at all. Last time Heather was here, locks like that weren't just broken on the physical level. Locks in places like this were also sometimes broken on a whole different level of existence as well, like the mechanical works of the doorknobs were stuck in another dimension. The girl could feel it. Nope, not this time. The Janitor did _something _to the door. Heather thought there was a kind of faint and sunny _glow _to those tools but wasn't sure.

There were a lot of things about this so-called Janitor that Heather couldn't be sure about. What mattered was that he was good at what he did. Now the door was open, and the concrete hospital stairway was absolutely clear and completely unguarded. Except for the token resistance put up by that shottie-swinging nurse-monster back there, there were no other enemies in sight. Gosh 'em-golly, this doesn't seem like a trap at all!

…

2.

...

And if the absolutely unoccupied stairwell didn't generate suspicion enough, that whole _it's-a-trap _feeling would be reinforced with an absolutely creature-free hallway on the third floor of this hospital-prison building. This hallway was so normal-looking that it could almost pass for being normal. Florescent light-tubing hung from office-type ceiling above, showing a corridor that actually looked like one in a completely typical and normal hospital—complete with generic floor tiles and walls done in various puke-green tones. No rusty metal for a floor, no freaky lead-brick walls, none of that, just as normal as anything. There must be a million hospitals with places like this throughout the world that Heather came from. Maybe the light fixtures had just touches of stains to them. And maybe the floor was just a _little _bit grittier than usual. But still, it was almost obscenely typical. Maybe the only difference between this hospital hallway and a hallway in Heather's world would be the view outside the window at the end, a view of that dying day outside as the dying sunlight of an other-worldly sun cast everything out there in low orange-reddish sunset colors. In here, in fact, the normalcy was almost a mockery.

A person almost expected some public-relations guy to come out and start talking. Hmm, yes. Welcome to the third floor. _Monsters_, one asks? No, we don't have any monsters around here. There are no such things! If one requires psychiatric assistance in light of seeing these…ah, so-called _monsters_, we have an excellent staff of mental health-care professionals as well as a wide selection of psycho-active medications to alleviate the condition, whatever is causing sight of these _monsters_. Should the need to become sick ever strike, this would be the place to go. That said, please be so kind as to walk this way…

Heather looked at the Janitor. The Janitor in turn glanced at her before returning his steady stare towards the third-floor hallway ahead. Janice was looking ahead as well. The view ahead was just too darned easy for any sensible person's tastes. Too many transitional crossings between worlds, too much killing of too many creatures that looked too nasty to live, too far and too long, and the way to their goal ended up being a plain-vanilla hospital hallway? There must be catch. There's _always _a catch.

The Janitor took the first step onto the absolutely normal-looking hospital floor. Seeing as how he was largely tagging along for the ride at this point, not having super-duper witch-abilities like the two other members, he figured he may as well act as point-man. That odd pistol of his was already drawn and aiming forward—the weapon having been drawn so fast and so quietly that it took Heather a moment to realize that the Janitor was suddenly holding it at all. Training and skill made it seem as if the weapon was a part of himself—probably also true for any weapon he was trained to use in the course of his weird universe-maintaining duties.

What, so the Janitor doesn't trust this oh-so-open hallway in this place at the center of influence held by the unseen presence? Come on, buddy! There are _no _monsters crouched behind the other closed doors! _No monsters _could be amassed in all of those rooms off to the sides, either. Never mind how this place was a dimensional next-door neighbor to an entire monster-homebody hideout, dudes! Never mind _all _of that. There are no monsters here, just tiny little dust-motes…

It was just too easy. Something had to stop this party or try to stop. Indeed, the infamous hospital room holding the other Heather was here, in this place, at the left side. It was like that destination was mentally _screaming _at Heather. The Janitor couldn't hear it. And since they were _just so close, _Janice was getting spiritual whispers.

"_Let's just go already!_" yelled Heather aloud, taking a _just-fork-it _attitude and making a run for it. If some shambling horror that was all ugly and freaky and with a foul attitude came hopping out of a side-door to shout _boogedie-boogedie-boogedie, _the girl just wouldn't care. They were just too close to stop for anything.

…

This party of three entered the long-lost hospital-prison room at long last. No grand ceremony marked this event. No swelling of dramatic music or big crowd added auditory pomp to this. It just happened. They made it.

Mall-girl Heather had been here before and knew what the place would look like. However, Heather almost didn't recognize the thin female figure in the bed—dressed in a simple shirt-garment that was just too short, exposed legs and arms with skin that had shapes swimming beneath the surface, a face obscured with the same. Straight dark hair looked just as limp as the rest of her—eyes closed. The girl was just so still.

_It can't be too late, _thought Heather, running over to the bed as illuminated with sunset-toned light from the barred window. How long were they too late?

It was _not_ too late. For all the infinite stretches of time that it took for help to come, waiting just a tad bit more did not make all the much more difference. What mattered at all was that help simply came at all. To that, the other Heather upon the bed opened her eyes. The other Heather also opened herself up to newly arrived hope in the form of this rescue.

Hope can do a great deal for a person who is sick. Be it a mental affliction such as depression to even physical maladies such as cancer, even the most hard-hearted materialist-minded physician will attest to the worth of having good morale in healing such conditions. A patient who sees at least some kind of positive future is always much more likely to recover.

The girl on the hospital bed not only recovered but recovered quickly. Those dark spots swimming beneath her skin suddenly went away—vanquished with _hope. _Now the girl's skin was cleared and making her all the more recognizable as looking exactly like Heather.

"You just had to come," was her greeting. "You came. I'm so glad…!" Yes, the other girl was so much like Heather, looking and sounding exactly like her, even smiling like her. "You know, that's a nice hairdo. Blonde and fluffy." Using her right hand in stroking some of her own head of dark lengths, the girl added, "Used to style mine the same way, but it went back to this after _they _cut off all the blonde and let it grow back in its original color. I hate it."

Said the Janitor, "I dunno 'bout hatin' it. Sorta go fer dark-haired women myself. Seems to be a lot of 'em hereabouts too." He used his left hand to readjust the bill of his soft-cap—the cap topping the Janitor's own head of dark waviness that would likely go to curls if left to grow beyond its regulation length. "What's wrong with bein' dark-haired?"

"Turn around," said the mall-girl Heather to the Janitor. The Janitor gave a questioning look. "Don't be a jerk. Just do it already!"

The Janitor shrugged and did indeed turn around. He heard the sound of a girl unsnapping and then unzipping a pair of tight jeans, sitting down to pop off her sneakers before completing the operation—the whisper of said jeans being removed from hips and thighs. More rustling of clothes came to pass—softer sounds of softer cloth. Eventually came the finalizing sound of a pair of jeans being zipped and snapped over the hips of their rightful owner who stood up to pull them back on. "You can turn back around now."

The Heather with blonde hair was sitting down and tying up her sneakers, while the one with dark hair was sitting in bed was standing and had a pair of socks on her feet. As to why the Janitor had to turn around, he figured the blonde-haired Heather gave the dark-haired one her unmentionables. Even with jeans on, there must have been a reason for the jeans to have been removed in the first place. The dual points of mall-girl Heather's nipples were visible through the thin cloth of her middie top. All of this ultimately meant that the Heather in blue jeans wasn't wearing any…

"Don't stare," said that Heather, getting a little red in the face. "I had to give her some dignity back, you know. You've been a pretty decent guy so far, too."

"Yeah… Even if I'm really not," countered the Janitor. "_Decent _is too close to being _nice_, an' nice guys don't qualify fer my profession. Besides, certain urges come with gonads, if ya catch my drift."

The blonde-haired Heather in blue-jeans and middie-top let out some of her frustration in a huff of breath and returned her gaze to her other self. All this way, all this distance, and now the Janitor reveals himself to be a perv. Thought Heather, _Some reunion this is turning out to be, huh?_

_Tell me about it, _came the other Heather's response…as communicated by thought. _Anyway, I've got to thank you again coming._

"What!" exclaimed the mall-girl Heather, using her voice. Use her voice? Why do that? Let's try this again. Was there a point to putting pointless wear and tear on the ol' vocal apparatus when _thinking _one's communication was getting to be the in-vogue thing nowadays? Not talking, _So you can do this too, huh? Can everybody? And is _everybody _peekin' into my head too or what? _

_Not really, _went the dark-haired Heather. _You've got some natural walls set up in your mind. It's not like I can see everything going on in there. But if you've got something worth saying to me while you're talking…_

_You can hear my mind too, _thought blonde-haired Heather right back. _But it's not like this is the first time you've invaded my privacy. Making me think I'm going crazier than usual. _

_Sorry, _mentally responded dark-haired Heather. _I just have to get outta here. If you could, wouldn't you've done the same? This place sucks the big one. This whole world, in fact. _

_I guess I would have to forgive you on that point…to a point, _agreed blonde-haired Heather. _Getting out of this place, I mean. You got that, Gothy?_

Janice's communicated thought was tinged with annoyance. _We can do without the less-than-reverent nomenclature. In any event, I now take it we have all the members necessary for bringing this task to a close. _

_Do you mean…? No! Are you kidding me! _Blonde Heather let out a huff before looking to Janice—that Heather's hazel eyes looking into Janice's dark ones. _You _must _be kidding me. Not only can you not be serious, you're not even on the same planet as seriousness. I've had enough with this screwy alternate-universes stuff to last me all my lifetimes put together. I'm taking my other self, my sister, clone or whatever… Yeah, _sister _oughtta be a good enough title for now. Anyway, all I wanna do now is take my sister back with me, and we'll see about getting back to getting a normal life. _

Thunk! One of Janice's unseen servants knocked down mall-girl Heather, making her fall onto her butt. And with a floor this hard, that wasn't pleasant. The hospital-dressed Heather tried helping the blonde one up but didn't have too much physical strength in her body to be of much assistance. It was the thought that counts, though…so to speak. "_Ow!_ You didn't have to do that. You've made your point."

"You shall listen to me and obey," said Janice aloud, using her voice for the sake of being heard by the Janitor. Thinking, _This journey has begun due to a fault of yours, and you—both of you—shall see to its completion through to the end. Then this party shall be dissolved._

Thought dark-haired Heather,_ All this talk of being a _party _and what-not… What is this, Lord of The Rings? Don't think I'm a hobbit for being short either, because my feet aren't hairy. Neither are my legs as you can't help but seeing. _

"Hey Janice," began the Janitor. "Respectfully speakin' an' all… If ya wanna chastise, could ya save the child abuse fer later? If I'm not mistaken, we got us a bigger problem that's just _waitin'_ to give us an ass-kickin'. An' we'd best do the ass-kickin' first before the thing gets an ass too big ta kick."

"_I'm not a child!_" went both Heathers at the same time. They looked at each other. Oh yes, those two certainly came from the same stock. Said the Heather in the hospital-prison shirt, "Nineteen's a year past the minimum age for adulthood…unless you've got to wait longer in where you're from."

"Nah, that ain't it!" responded the Janitor. "Where I'm from, any guy that starts growin' hair where there ain't been hair before is an adult. Fer the gals, it's the first time when they get their first monthly delivery of cranberry juice."

"Ew!" went the Heather in mall-girl clothes. "A perv _and _a gross-out! It makes me wonder if guys like you are made or born. Are you like a perv and a gross-out naturally, or does it take practice?"

Chimed in dark-haired Heather, "Always a guy, huh? I wish men had something come out of _them _with the cycles of the moon …besides the usual b-s from their mouths all the time. We'd see whose making jokes then, huh?"

"Probably," agreed the Janitor. "So…Janice? Heather? Both you Heathers? We gonna boogie on down or what?" And that was all the Janitor managed to say before the quake hit.

…

When the earth itself shakes, it's called an _earthquake._ The earth...will quake. See that? Makes perfect sense. This party of four, however, couldn't rightly say if this was the planet Earth. Lord knows what the locals of this world call it. One can't call it an _earthquake _if the people of this planet didn't call it _Earth._ Something was happening at least. To quote a king of rock and roll, _whole lotta shakin' goin' on! _That shakin' didn't last overly long, and nobody was hurt. It nevertheless left both Heathers feeling queasy. It wasn't just a quake on the physical level. The cause behind it was making its presence known—the _unseen presence_…

It wasn't as if that evil dude was going to let this party of four mosey on out of this hospital and ride off into the radioactive-looking other-worldly sunset. Hells no. This was easy so far, but it wasn't going to be _all _easy. Where would be the fun in that? The unseen presence kept off manifesting nurse-monsters and doctor-things and midget-things because it was saving its evil mojo for the final showdown. Failing to use dark-haired Heather to be born, unable to establish a legitimate presence in the world according to the rules, he was going to make this last dance a doozie.

The nice-and-normal hallway outside the hospital-prison room…suddenly wasn't so nice-and-normal any damned more. It had changed and had become a darker version of its previous self. This dimensionally altered hospital hallway continued for maybe nine more steps before coming to an end and looking chopped off. And where the hospital hallway ended, a jagged different section was attached. It all had a vicious, improvised look. No way could any hospital have such a section and pass any kind of human health-inspection unless the inspector was drunk, blindfolded and with hands tied behind the back to keep from so much as even _feeling _the walls let alone seeing them.

Evil metal… Everything was all dark and evilly industrial-looking. The walls were made of dark metal bricks that were slightly uneven as so some of the bricks stuck out sloppily. Red-rusted grating formed the floor that continued onwards to an elevator. It was a good thing the flooring was so porous and made of grating because it allowed the drips to just leak through—the drips and dribbles of dark fluid that came down the metal-brick walls of this corridor—the fluid passing from the grating and down into the dark machinery beneath the grated floor. Above, the ceiling consisted of woven barbed wire—woven into which were florescent light-tubes.

Janice thought this architecture was rather interesting. There wouldn't be too long to peruse this décor, however. They had some business that needed getting done. Dry and nasty sounds of tortured metal and straining machinery squealed out as the elevator doors opened in invitation. Come on in, folks. Step lively now.

Both Heathers, Janice and the Janitor obliged—stepping beyond the open doors of the elevator. Then came those same dry and nasty sounds as the elevator doors came to close once more. Electromechanical workings of machinery made by something other than humans rattled and hummed in delivering the passengers down. We're going to have some fun now, aren't we? Oh yes-sir-ee-Bob….

…

No lights illuminated this elevator they were riding down in, and there was no elevator music beyond the rhythmic rattling hum of other-worldly machinery. No lights, yet they were somehow able to see things just barely. Not that a person would appreciate seeing what there was to see. Rust-coated armored metal walls, a floor that was no different, and a gritty ceiling that was stamped with some creepy letters from a language like nothing on Earth, no-o-o thank you. Don't even ask if those words were from anything even _close _to anything from Earth, not even a language close to Uzbek or Urdu, because it just wasn't close at all. All the while was this elevator going ever-downward, ever-deeper, descending into the darkened depths of this other world.

…

3.

…

It would have been really messed up if the unseen presence did something to the elevator to make sure that the party of four didn't make it to the bottom floor alive and intact right then and there. The evil dude could've just been like, _Ha-ha suckers, I'm going to make you have an accident. And by having an accident, I don't mean one in your pants. Why the Hell not? You bitches are riding _my _elevator! _

It would've been all _zoo-o-m…splat _as the elevator's trip to the bottom floor would be over in a quick hurry when the elevator's gears quickly disappeared due to the machinations of the unseen presence. On Heather's version of Earth (mall-girl Heather's Earth, at least), elevators go up and down on metal cables and _usually _have safety-locking mechanisms that kick in if the elevator's car decides to go down too fast. The cables can snap or gears would fail, but the safety-locking system would definitely kick in. This wasn't Heather's world, though. In fact, this wasn't _either _Heather's world—not mall-girl Heather's world, not hospital-prison Heather's world either. _Silly _human notions and their _silly _ideas of consumer safety, those didn't apply in this-here alternate reality, buckaroos. Inhuman beings and trans-dimensional creatures are too damn busy raising Hell in other worlds to worry about crap like _consumer safety! Consumer safety? Sucks to that, buckaroos! Sucks! So you can just kiss our demonic asses…before your human asses burst in the elevator, going down at like sixty kilometers an hour going straight down_. 

If not kill them quickly when the elevator took a dive, why not kill them with boredom? If not drop them, the unseen presence would have locked the doors and stopped the elevator where it was in the shaft. This would trap all four adventurers in a small space that would seem to get smaller all the time as they sang Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on The Wall until their voices cracked, their lips bled and their dried-up tongues fell out of their heads. Yeah, or have them listen to _two _Heathers bitching it up and swapping smart-ass comments until they drove themselves _tout-a-fait _bonkers, _mes amis_. Wa-hey! Why not? The unseen presence should have done _something _to that elevator. All's fair in love and war, right?

Wrong. The unseen presence should have gimped the elevator to put an end to the quest. Should have, would have…but _couldn't. _The unseen presence _could not _perform any of the above-mentioned acts of elevator sabotage because of the rules.

Everything has rules, even warfare. A person wouldn't think so, given the bullet-riddled antics and blood-filled shenanigans going on these days, but warfare really does. For example, soldiers can be quite assured that the enemy won't show up dressed like clowns—big floppy colorful outfits and big floppy shoes complete with rubber noses that doubled as remote detonators of nuclear ordnance. (_Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee…! Honk-honk, kaboo-o-om-m-m!_) Either the soldiers of one side will be too busy laughing their asses off before shooting up the silly idiots in colorful costumes, or the whole darned battlefield will get vaporized with _no _winner. No, no and no! Warfare is done in a certain way—one side or the other showing up (unannounced these days) dressed for the occasion in clothes that blend in with the terrain. When it's done, nobody's going to do anything crazy like start putting on floppy shoes or asking for florescent wigs. Rules exist in war not because they are totally dependant on pre-existing treaties and what-not, but simply because the ways of war make those rules. Besides, clowns just suck.

_Couldn't have_, the unseen presence could _not _pull a dirty stunt with that elevator. Though the hospital and various extra-dimensional aspects of it were allegedly all now the realm of the unseen presence, there were some aspects of it that were simply beyond his control. Those front doors to the hospital-prison, they couldn't be locked to those fated to be here. And if a monster-mashing party of four want to ride the elevator down to Hell, Hades or wherever—depending on one's religious orientation—they could do that.

_Couldn't have _and _wouldn't have, _all of these rules existed just because they existed. The rules were there just like how most humans are born with two hinged meat-tubes called legs and another pair of hinged meat-tubes called arms attached to a torso, complete with a fur-topped spheroid for a noggin. Why are humans made that way? Why couldn't humans come with _six _arms instead of just two, so three pairs of arms can get done three times the work? Why not _two _heads instead of one, so one head can sleep while the other works a second part-time job? Why does the Earth have a _blue _sky, some universes? Red is just such a more _awesome _color. Why were the rules in place within the domain of the unseen presence? Why, why, why? Some things just are the way the are, just because they are—like the rules. The rules are the rules, just because they are.

_Thump-clank-k-k! _This elevator reached its destination unmolested and in fully working order. As such, those doors _squ-e-e-ealed _open. The four members of the party looked beyond to see what there was to see. Bottom floor, ladies and genttlemen—dorky dumbasses, dead doorknobs and devilish demons. Everybody out.

…

They had come down to a dark place that really _was _down. Beyond this elevator was a great big open space that had darkness above and all around, surrounded by darkness. That elevator must have given one _Hell _of a ride, because it took them way beyond just any old typical hospital-prison basement. They weren't even in the basement anymore. This was clearly a place that was somewhere else, if not nowhere else.

_Nowhere _would be a good way to identify this place because that infinite darkness all around made it impossible to tell if it really was anywhere. Though dark all around, there was a circular area of dark reddish dirt, an area that was somehow visible despite there being no apparent light source in sight. All around the border was a dark circle that was surprisingly neat. But all the details of this little patch of other-worldly real-estate failed to matter because the main attraction was actually going to reveal himself.

All four party members stepped beyond the wide outer-edge of the huge circle in the strange dirt. No sooner had they done that when blazing-blue flames _flared _out from the circle in the strange dirt to keep them inside. Yellow fire is just kind of hot, but _blue _fire is hot-hot-hot! They weren't going anywhere. Then something _r-r-r-roared _as its presence faded into solid existence.

_It _was the unseen presence, now seen. And…hot damn, what a _presence_ he was now. In fact, since he was so damned important, he also deserves his name and title capitalized just as the Janitor gets by with a capital _J. _So make that…the _Presence._

The Presence in physical form was big, which made sense since its influence throughout this realm was big. That was _big _height-wise as well as being _big _left to right. From the waist up, a hugely muscular and hairless red chest and upper body, it was an awesome chest that mounted a huge set of shoulders and thickly muscled arms, a physique that would put an entire herd of California-beach bodybuilders to shame and that state's governor along with them. The Presence was so built that even his muscles had _muscles_—those thick roundish sinews standing out on major muscle groups that bulged in skin so tight that it looked set to burst. From the waist-down were a thickly muscled set of reverse-jointed legs with the wide thigh-parts but skinny bottom parts, reverse-jointed legs like a big set of goat-legs. And like all things of a goaty nature, this dude had a set of cloven hooves instead of an honest-to-goodness set of _feet_. Hairy goat-legs, a smooth-skinned super-muscled chest, that left just one other area of the body being hairy—the head. (Yes, his head was hairy. What were _you _thinking? Some people ought to get their minds out of the trans-dimensional gutter.) It was a really hairy head with a really long pointed face and having a wicked set of pointy horns coming out the sides.

Nope, there was no mistaking what the once-unseen presence _really _was now, the unseen presence having become…_the Presence_. The nature of the Presence was as obvious as its physical appearance. It only made too much sense in the end.

It would also make sense for the Janitor to just start shooting—which he did. _Wait, _was what both Heathers wanted to say to the Janitor, yet the Janitor was just too quick on the draw to be stopped by words that couldn't be said in time. He aimed and fired, the sound of his pistol being louder than usual because he had switched it to that high-firepower mode used back at the motel. Why the Hell not? Maximum firepower was exactly the kind of thing one would want against the physical manifestation of an ultimate evil.

Most physical creatures can be killed by typical and conventional means if one puts enough effort into doing so. If a creature was solid enough to touch, it was solid enough to kill. Anything from a trusty bludgeon to one's preferred selection of firearms can put it down.

Would gunfire alone kill cloven-hoofed big boy over there? Yeah right. As if it was that easy. Sure, that big ol' cloven-hoofed dude now had a few holes in his chest, nine holes where a heart was supposed to be if its torso was as human as it looked. The Presence was still standing too. And he didn't take too kindly to being shot up by some scrub-brush savant in blue coveralls and work-shirt.

To that, the Presence _roared _and glared at the Janitor—those goaty dark eyes in the goaty face staring. The Janitor had his chance. Now it was the turn of the Presence to bring the hurt now. A _blast _of bright-red lightning flashed down from above—an outburst of light and heat. The Janitor was lanced from cap-covered head to shoe-clad toe with the intense electrical attack, which blasted him off of his feet. Up…and turning in mid-air, he came back down to hit the dusty ground chest-first. His entire body gave one hard twitch, him coughing once, not trying to get up after that.

As the Presence gave a _roar _of triumph and started stomping around on his cloven hooves, both Heathers ran over to where the Janitor was lying on the red-dirt ground. For the umpteenth time so far, somebody looked to be dead or dying. Yet they were alive after all. Too bad about it being for real this time for sure.

"You're gonna… You're gonna need this to deal with your one-time friend. Least I gave it a shot, _baby-doll_… _Heh… Ah-hem! More like nine shots…_" he wheezed and offered his pistol to whichever Heather would take it. One Heather did. Relieved of his weapon and his mission, he then closed his eyes, saying nothing else—becoming still.

With the hospital-dressed Heather watching, the mall-girl Heather held and regarded the Janitor's pistol. The metal weapon looked heavy but actually felt very light as if the thing was cooperative. Even while tears threatened to blur the eyes of both Heathers, they had an idea of what the Janitor really meant. Both stood to look at the battle happening now.

The Presence was roaring and looking around. It was casting red lighting all around itself—the smell of strange burning flesh in the air. Those bolts of crimson lightning were hitting something_. _Rather, they were hitting some _things._

Janice was busy while the Heathers had gone to the Janitor. Stood with feet apart and dark-fingernailed hands forward, the tall girl in dark leather was summoning unseen servants by the dozen. Her unseen servants were also being _killed _by the unseen dozen. Because they were only partially present into whatever dimension they were summoned—only enough of them around to perform physical acts such as working or fighting—their dead bodies did not pile up on this plane of existence. That meant an unlimited number of unseen servants would have plenty of room to have their chance at striking the horn-headed Presence without having to climb over the fishy bodies of their fallen brethren. The numbers of their casualties were increasing, but more of them just kept coming at the Presence and his strikes of red lightning.

It was the perfect time for both Heathers to tip the balance of this stalemate. One Heather's emotions were still running hot after the Janitor died right in front of her. The other Heather was feeling pretty damned heated herself after being able to finally face the evil which kept her trapped in that concrete room for so…damned…long… Both Heathers were joined in mind and purpose, their minds…_turning to crimson anger. Thoughts blurred as their power increased to the flash point. _

Both the Presence and Janice paused in their fight. It was the Presence who was now damaged. Bad enough how he already had a shot in his truly awesome chest just about thirty times. Now the whole right side of his awesome muscular torso was burnt crispy. If one had ever seen a bad-off victim of a house-fire or a side of beef left too long over a roasting pit, one would know the sight—flesh burnt and turned blackened, sticking to the bones. His goat-like head looked down at what the Hell just happened as if he couldn't believe anything mortal could hurt him. Was he hurt? Anything with half its upper-body burnt to the core was most definitely hurt. So that would be yes. Hells yes_._

_Now, _thought the hospital-dressed Heather, communicating the thought. Mall-girl Heather raised the Janitor's pistol. The weapon was a little different from the usual selection of firearms from her world. Okay, make that a _lot _different. It was nevertheless easy for her to use the thing since the basics were the same. So the girl fired with assurance and was certain of hitting her target.

Janice's entire body shook once as the bullet took her through the back—a blast of dark fluid spraying outward from the hard place between her breasts. Still standing, the fluid dripped down the front of her leather dress where the exit wound left too big of a hole. The goth-girl staggered a step, turned around, the heels of her calf-length boots clicking. Her mouth moved though no words came out. _Clever girl,_ went Janice's communicated thought before falling backwards. Her body hit the dark-reddish ground. Fallen, her black-leather jacket and head of long dark hair spread out like dark wings. Dark fluid spread out in a pool. It wasn't human blood.

Meanwhile, the Presence wasn't doing too well himself. The huge dude over there was still commiserating over half of his body being made an extra-crispy black. Not having been in an actual physical body before, these sensations of _hurt _and _debilitation _were completely new to him. He just couldn't believe it and still just…wasn't…believing…this… Just like a bully, a damned bully, he couldn't believe he could be _really _hurt until he actually was—hurt by people he was supposed to hurt. When he was hurt, it was like the end of the world for him. The Presence would never have believed this could happen to _him_. And he _certainly _wouldn't believe what happened next.

The Heather with the pistol took aim and shot the Presence right in the burnt side of the torso. Burnt chunks just blew off—like shattering a statue with a hammer. That Heather then shot him again. This time, the burnt right side crumbled and fell off completely to expose ripped innards that only looked partially like human insides. Now the physical body of the Presence was broken, leaving him dying with only half of his torso. And when one more shot finally took him through his goat-like head, things…_became blurred_

_When the Presence died to this world, a sunset-colored blur washed over everything here. Both Heathers felt it come over them and thought they'd be burnt up by the bright blurriness. It didn't hurt them. Actually, it felt kind of…good. It _was _good. The sunset-colored blur changed their surroundings. Darkness was replaced with the sight of concrete walls. That magnificently mighty body of the Presence, the body which cost him most everything to manifest and was subsequently mutilated, it crumbled out of this existence. (Get the Hell out of here, and take your sorry demon-corpse with you!) Since Janice was an entity that was akin to the Presence, all of her body also dissolved away as well. It should also be known that the sunset-colored blur wasn't the color of pain and suffering on the horizon—not the color red. This sunset-colored blur was a beautiful and blessed golden color. _

…

_That infinite darkness all around was replaced…_with reality. Bright light shone from the open doorway of a stairwell, one leading up and out of hospital-prison's basement. Shining down here, the light showed a row of large tank-like machines which could be generators, could be boilers, but neither Heather had technical knowledge enough of this world to know the difference. All they knew was that those big machines were once important for something. If the Janitor was here, he'd know what those machines were and what they did. More important was how those big machines were silent.

The Janitor was gone. His pistol was also gone—like how something truly awesome that a person has in a dream is not there upon waking up. Things that exist in dreams and wishes do not exist in the waking world unless ones _makes _them a reality through effort and hope. And maybe, just maybe, the Janitor was one of those dream-things—somebody who was too good at too many things to exist. At least not exist yet.

_Let's get outta this dump, _thought one Heather to the other. It didn't matter which Heather communicated the thought. They both had the same thing in mind. What mattered was a bright stairwell that went up and out—out of the place of dark machines underground and into the light of day.


	21. Chapter 21

_Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection _

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 21

…

1.

…

Not only was it a well-established fact by now that other versions of Silent Hill exist in other realities, another truth came in how parts of that _screwed-up _town also exist between realities. There was so much Silent Hill that all of the town just couldn't be contained to one world. Therefore, one could say that the town kind of leaked between realities just as other realities leaked in, which allowed Heather to go on a merry trans-dimensional jaunt with Janice by way of something in one version of Silent Hill and into another, and then another…so on and so-forth. It was this leakage which allowed creatures other than Heather and Janice to slip between the worlds like a demonic equivalent of a foreign student-exchange program. A lot of those Silent Hills were appropriately described as being _screwed up_, too—all those dog monsters and fog monsters, crying monsters and flying monsters. The fog, especially don't forget that kick-ass fog, not quite hiding everything a person doesn't want to see.

Oh, but the Silent Hill of this reality was going to see different days. This town was all fouled up for far too long in an all-enshrouding and light-killing fog, if not hope-killing fog. Too long was this town cut off and away from the rest of the normalcy from where it came. For too damned long, its _people _were cut off and away from humanity just as the edges of town were cut away in the days in which the fog came…and those damned _monsters. _With the death of the Presence, all of that was an undone deal.

That infamous fog was heated up and cleared away by the bright golden rays of full sunlight from the real sun, a bright golden thing shining from the sky. Survivors had long since come out of their hidey-holes within the depths of buildings with boarded-up windows and row-houses reinforced as so they resembled homemade fortresses against the forces of darkness. Darkness gone with the fog, now the people could come out. Their eyes were widened and skin paled in adjusting to how things were before. Now everything was all bright and clear again for these townies. They squinted and looked around and saw clear views of streets and houses, trees and parked cars at the sides. The day was open and belonged to the people. For the sake of considering how some folks of other worlds aren't human, let it be known that this day belonged to _human _people—daylight brought by the return of real sunlight from a sun that wasn't scheduled to dim for another few billion years in this reality.

The mildew and mold, along with other kinds of vegetable-like life that that didn't even belong in this world, all of that started to dry up as the environment here was becoming dry and all sunny. And if those forms of other-worldly life were getting weak and dying off, so were the monsters. Like the mildew and mold, the monsters were just so aggressive and strong before. Now they were all gimped.

Science could maybe explain this. If one believed in science explaining everything, perhaps one could say that some kind of essential chemical nutrient vital to the monsters' survival was being leeched out of the environment with the fog being vaporized. An alternate explanation could be had in regards to the physical aspects of their habitat, the climate changing in ways to make life inhospitable to them. The world was a-changin'…again, and the monsters weren't changin' with them. Now the monsters may as well go the way of the dinosaur even if it took those king lizards a good long time to die out. These monsters were going to be done in days.

Then again, it's too bad science has the bad habit of being wrong for too-long lengths of time. Recall that scientists are the first jokers in line to start ragging on anything that doesn't fit their scientific world view. Scientists call ghost-hunters a bunch of hoaxers, frauds and loonies. Yeah, and scientists were ragging on spiritualists since the Victorian Era in England. The loch ness monster is an old fisherman's tale, so say those well-dressed guys with official opinions. _Loch ness monster, my ass!_ Scientists therefore classify such phenomena in the same folders as the ones used to store tales told by country bumpkins about rocks falling from the sky and giant sea-monsters washing up on shore. And scientists _kept _denying rocks coming out of the sky and the existence of sea monsters…right up to the time that _meteors _were discovered and when dead specimens of giant squid really _did _wash up on shore. Oops, science fumbles again, and again. As for ghosts and demons… Well, anybody from this _screwed up _town will tell all about that.

And if one cottoned on to the more spiritual and supernatural explanation of things, there was plenty of justification to be had for the monsters dying out. Spiritually, maybe it was the unseen presence which gave those monsters the means of slipping through into this world and staying here. The unseen presence could have given them some kind of spiritual energy or something to stay alive even while their bodies were so malformed as to be barely viable. With the unseen presence having become the Presence, physically manifested and killable—then killed—the big boss who kept their ugly monster-asses alive was _gone, _baby. They couldn't stay healthy in this world without that spiritual nutrition. Also, they sure as Hell had a hard time going back to where they came from since reality was a lot more solid now.

They couldn't stay either, becoming just so weak and in a dying state. Everything in full town daylight was all crisp and clear. The monsters' bodies were failing. All of those ugly mutant-bastards, big and small, squat and tall, they just couldn't handle it.

Not only were the monsters physically weak, they were also a heck of a lot less scary in full daylight. Those freaks were not any less ugly, mind, just not as scary. Inhuman beings with extra limbs, shambling creatures with fur, things that were once human and things that weren't even from worlds that had humans in them, all of those things were limping along the street in dazed conditions or cowering from the clear brightness, hiding themselves whereas they once strutted so proudly like they owned this town.

So monsters don't look like ordinary folks or ordinary animals for that matter. Yet they were mostly harmless by this point. The worst of them were laid out in the open and lazing about, sick and weak in the unfamiliar air. In short, the monsters were pathetic.

It's party time. "_Kill the monsters!_" shouted one of the townspeople, a shout in the bright day, raising a lead pipe in a clenched fist. All kinds of laws in Heather's world outlawed lead in piping a long time ago. Not in this one. If the surgeon general was around, he or she would say something about lead pipes being used as bludgeons can be harmful to monsters' health.

For those whose attention spans are still up to par thus far, this needs bit of extrapolation. Lead causes all kinds of long-term toxic maladies when used in piping and dinner plates. It drove the rich folks in Ancient Rome absolutely nuts because that was exactly what the Ancient Romans used lead for—pipes and plates. Eating off of lead dining-ware, drinking water out of lead pipes, that's bad news. The stuff gets into the blood, and into the brain… It made lots of rich and important Ancient Romans sick and dying but not before they had some more influence on language used even thousands of years into the future. Lead, _plumbum _in Latin, like the lead used in lead pipes. That's why it's called _plumbing._ It doesn't take much stretching of the ol' thinkworks to realize where the word _plumber _comes from. And by the way, certain kinds of professionals in Ancient Rome kept the entrances houses and homes safe from trouble—the Latin word for door being _janua_. _Janua_, _Janitor, _it's too easy to figure out that connection, especially the connection to certain lost professionals who had dealings with certain pathways between dimensions… (Also try reading the name _Janice _out loud to a student of that very same civilization. See what you're told.) Ah, those Ancient Romans and their extended influence on realities far beyond their own, gotta love 'em!

All this talk of ancient civilizations and professions aside, things are just about to get savage—the townsfolk getting _medieval _on some monsters' asses. _Kill the monsters! Kill them all! _

Other people took up this savage battle-cry and moved accordingly. There were plenty of wasted monsters lying around in the open that were just _waiting _to be bludgeoned, butchered, bashed, stomped, slaughtered, obliterated and just plain obliterated. Therefore, there was plenty of action to be had around here. Before this, the people had plenty of exercise in running from some monsters and fighting others where they could. The townspeople were also well-fed since hoarded supplies of canned and preserved food also lasted pretty long since the human population was thinned out—most humans having disappeared or being done in by nasty things that crawled into this universe from whatever trans-dimensional toilet or gutter they came from. Not anymore, dudes! It would be the townspeople who were doing the killing now.

_Kill the monsters! Kill 'em! Kill 'em a-a-a-all! _Now _everybody _was in on the action, lody-doddy every-body. People all had their trusty bludgeons and sharpened implements which were well-used in that long time of surviving the time of fog. Axes, baseball bats, pickaxes, fire-axes shovels with the edges sharpened by scraping them along the street, even angled car-jacks, you name it, and they were using it. _Wham! Smash! Squish! Spl-l-l-lat! _(Ooh yeah, especially _splat._)All kinds of sounds came from all of those things being used on all kinds of monsters! Yes-sir-ee-Bob, killing monsters is fun for the whole family.

With all of this monster-killing going on, it was inevitable that a lot of monsters would end up dead—which was sort of the whole point. Heaps of malformed creatures, inhuman beings and things that didn't look even close to human, whole piles of those dead things were building up on ever street and street corner, along with every sidewalk. Dead and dying monsters were dragged along and tossed onto sidewalk heaps made of their downright ugly brethren to make the heaps even bigger. More of them were being heaped on all the time.

Meanwhile, people were going after stored hoards of kerosene, gasoline and lighter fluid. And when some people couldn't find spare jerry-cans of the stuff, they used lengths of rubber hose to siphon some out of those long-parked vehicles and pour the resulting liquids into buckets. It was a wonder that the gasoline was still good to use after all of this time, as if the fog had slowed time enough to prevent the degredation of that flammable chemical. Some of it wasn't good, but still… Well, it was no use keeping go-juice in cars that wouldn't run anymore anyway—being subject to the oxidizing and corrosive effects of that odd fog, the fog which wouldn't come back any damned more. What was with the fuel?

Oh goodness! Here we go with more extrapolation. Come on now, pay attention. This is really important. Sit up in your chair and cut the chatter. (And Jimmy, if you throw that wad of paper, it'll be a trip to the principal's office for you courtesy of either your own two feet or the security guard in the hall.)

Now we go back to the point at hand. Monsters are dirty, diseased, ugly, _evil. _Things that are dirty, diseased, ugly and evil are best disposed of in a way well-known to humanity since the mythical act of Prometheus bringing light to humanity. That means of disposal was _fire._

(Since we've got fiery destruction going, you're paying attention _now, _huh class?) All of those jerry-cans and buckets of flammable liquids were poured wholesale onto the heaping piles of monsters. So light 'em up, dudes!

And light they did. Those heaps were becoming bonfires of malformed, deformed and strange flesh that oozed blood that was more often of colors other than Earth-animal red. It was interesting how the oily blood really did act like the bubbly stuff that comes up from the ground in some parts of the world, flammable as Hell. Somebody was always around with a lighter or a match to set to the works to get the blazes started on all the streets around here. Some kinds of monsters gave off toxic fumes—particularly the kinds of monsters with shells and scales instead of skin.

But in general, the drying bodies of the monsters went up pretty easily. Smoke was up and in the air in no time. It brings to mind that old movie where someone of the military sort glorified the aroma of a certain chemical ordnance in the A.M. Speaking of the military, it would be the palls of smoke from these street-side fires which would be seen by soldiers of the National Guard, units being mobilized and deployed to come into the newly returned Town of Silent Hill.

It was happy endings all around for the people, and it was a not-so-happy tale for the monsters. Yet this was just one ending for just one world's version of Silent Hill. There are other universes, other realities. In those other realities, the darkness and fog still remain. Things borne of the darkness still rule. Those are other stories, however—other places. This place at this time was made free of the darkness and madness. Other stories still go on. Other worlds…

…

That wasn't the end of this story. If this was a movie or a rather expensively made computer-game, the surviving saviors of that Silent Hill would go riding off into the sunset as the sweet gentle parting theme-song plays while the screen fades to black. Roll the credits, white words scrolling on a black background—a blackness darker than the darkness of the universe.

Those two girls managed to get out and away. They were not dead. Their lives went on even after all of that dark madness involving alternate-reality trips and strange sights. _What a long, strange trip it's been. _They've dealt with places so wrecked that not even real-estate speculators could sell them. They've also dealt with creatures so twisted, distorted ugliness that not even a mother could love—because their mothers probably would have flushed their own malformed progeny down toilets or sent them off to orphanages, whatever. (Goodness knows what mothers in other universes _really _do to the babies that don't look right to them. It wouldn't be surprising if they dumped 'em into nuclear-powered grinders to make baby-flesh meat patties to fry up on Friday nights. It would have to be Saturday because everybody would be too bombed to do serious cooking on Saturday.)

What was it that Janice said? Oh yes… As soon as the deed was done, the party was to be dissolved. They long suspected that Janice—as if that was her real name—had plans for them. Such plans involved the pulses of both Heathers, as in _stopping _their pulses. Would the Heathers be allowed to go happily sauntering off and away after transgressing upon Janice's sacred domain? Hells no. Janice was going to kill both of those trans-dimensional troublemakers as soon as they helped her destroy the unseen presence. Janice ended up being destroyed herself.

An awful lot of dying seemed to happen around the name _Heather _nowadays. Their mothers were dead, killed by sickness. Their dads were dead, killed in their sleep. Lots more people—human and otherwise—were also dead, dead, and dead some more. A person would think they were part-timing it for the grim reaper himself…or herself, depending on one's religious outlook.

This didn't leave the girls unaffected. All of that death put a real damper on things. They both shared the pain of their own lives from other worlds. Now that they had each other as well as their reawakened abilities, this constant pain and suffering imposed upon them by others had to stop. They would _make _it stop.

Also let it be known that, though both Heathers looked especially human on the outside, they were not borne of this world themselves. They were especially susceptible to the contaminants of a certain other dimension. Dark fluid began to mingle within their seemingly human bloodstream. All of that exposure to the bad radiation, the toxic air, all of that weakened the human aspects of their physiology. And the pain, don't forget about the pain. The dark fluid within their bodies reacted to the pain and fed off of it. That was exactly how and why their inhuman abilities were able to surface. Was it too much to say that this could mean big trouble?

…

_That little radio-which-really-wasn't-a-radio was…_resting upon a darkened desk-that-really-wasn't-a-desk. It goes without saying that this room really wasn't just a room, not anywhere in this world. That would mean it was actually nowhere. This nowhere-place radio (which really wasn't a radio and all that) sat silent for a little while. All was just so quiet.

As they say, it's quiet before the storm. Who the Hell is this mystical and all-knowing _they_, by the way? _They _say this, and _they _say that. The last group of entities described as _they_ ended up being burnt up with _their _nasty buddies in those great big heaping piles of monster-corpses. This was a different kind of _they, _those humans who say goofball and immortal sayings like, _better to have loved and lost than not have loved at all _and about how _bad things happen in threes,_ all those folksy sayings from all over the world, many of the worlds where they had a human language.

Speaking of silence before climactic chaos, a big storm of static flared out from the radio's little speaker. Given the noise that sucker was making, a person would think the radio was being tortured, slaughtered and gutted, its seemingly little electronic life being snuffed out by a would-be radio killer who couldn't take the noise. People who use lots of paper get called _tree killers_. People who experiment on helpless little critters in laboratories for the advancement of medical science are called _animal killers_. Why not _radio killers_?

Blasting static and loud squealing shrieked out and let the world know that the electronic radio wasn't happy at all. This time, there was no subtlety in the radio's noise of fearful screams. It was an out-and-out loud warning about what was going to happen. There were no subtle lyrics with double meanings _this _time. Something really wrong was…_coming, really wrong, really bad, heaps of big trouble on the way…! _

…

2.

…

This world went on as usual, things in this city. Darkness made for the sky overhead—an infinite darkness, seemingly starless as miscellaneous urban pollutants washed out the light from the stars. Darkness above, the streetlamps illuminating streets and there being a lot less traffic around. Most people were asleep or ought to be in their little apartments within big apartment buildings. The coming of night means that people ought to take it easy.

It was in the depths of this city night that a limousine seemed to flow along the streets—a coffin-black sleek metal vehicle of dark shines with tinted windows. Something shiny and black, there was something intriguing about an object which had almost no color but also reflected light, something odd about that. There was also more than a little something odd about that limousine, such as how the thing was able to drive along with the headlights off. It had no trouble zooming along even in the parts of town where the streetlamps weren't exactly the brightest. No police officer stopped the thing. This was even though the vehicle must have passed about a baker's dozen of cop cars in the course of its travels among and along the streets—a vehicle of darkness that sounded like the breeze itself. A baker's dozen really isn't just a dozen, and the limousine was not just a limousine. It's something more.

A sweeping gust of autumn-feeling night air swirled and blasted along one street in particular, a street with one apartment building in particular. It was one of those sudden unsettling cold gusts that cause an extra chill to someone all used to the air being balmy and humid. Weather should be either warm or cold. Not only did the wind suddenly turn chill, it stayed chill. Little wet droplets of condensed moisture beaded the outside of the apartment-building's windows. The changeover from summer to fall was supposed to be really slow and gradual. No way was it supposed to go like this. It was like something was sucking the warmth out of all the air all of a sudden. And…were the nearby streetlamps now dimmer?

A fresh howl of cold night wind matched the arrival of the limousine out behind the city apartment building. Its six tires—a pair up front for steering and two sets in back—made crackling sounds as the thickly inflated rubber eased to a stop on the suddenly cold hard surface of the parking lot.

A mechanical _click-clomp, _and the back door of the limousine opened. First a pair of sneakered feet set down onto the asphalt—the ankles covered with jeans. This was followed by another set of feet—this pair covered with socks. Those feet belonged to two girls both known as Heather—the one in sneakers wearing jeans and middie-baring top, the other with socks on her feet and a thin white long-shirt for her torso. The difference in clothing mattered little because both resembled physical doubles of one another to the point where they both had heads of straight dark hair framing their faces.

These two girls made their way to the rear entrance of the apartment building, the entrance with a caged light-fixture set over the metal doorway in. Meanwhile, this limousine out here would just stay here and sit. The limousine wasn't going anywhere—not without its new owners who just went into the apartment building for the night. It was just for the night, for tomorrow it would take them elsewhere and anywhere they so desired. After all, this limousine was not really just a limousine. Like something _out of this world, _one would say. Far out, dude! Far out!

_Blink-flicker… _That caged light over the apartment's rear entrance did that flickering thing. _Flick-flicker, _went some of the nearby streetlamps along the street in front of this apartment building. A faint high and loud sound came from off and away in the city. Was it a random squeak of tires, or was it a scream? That was hard to tell since the sound was just so far away. Lots of things were hard to tell, such as what exactly was going on here and how things would turn out

…

Remember that ancient and immortal group of wise-folks known as _they_?Remember those guys to whom everybody credits almost every single wise thing ever said? Remember, _they _said that bad things happen in threes? When _they _came up with that one, _they _were most certainly not just sitting around, alcoholic beverages going in one end of their bodies with piss and farts coming out the other, idly speculating drop-dead awesome things to say from a state of intoxication. (Lord knows some people think they're the sages of all eternity if they get enough booze in them, like that guy who said he single-handedly invented gravity and the Internet. Makes someone wonder what he was doing with the other hand, and he certainly wasn't massaging his ego.) Or perhaps the all-knowing _they _simply had to be drunk or some other altered form of consciousness to the point of being maybe a little bit flatulent in terms of wisdom—their forebrains in a suppressed state of consciousness to allow them access to the subconscious mystical core of the universe, able to see the deeper truths behind _everything. _One of those deep truths beyond reality could very well be that whole evils-in-threes deal. But, jeez-cheese, why does it have to be _three_? Why couldn't it be a nice even number divisible by two, like six or four? Everybody likes even numbers because they're just so neatly divisible. So why not let it be even numbers when calculating bad events? Better yet, just have it as so bad news just happens in _twos _at the most and be done with that because people can only take so much really, really bad news before they start to crack.

Bad news is maybe hearing that one's credit card bill is a day past due and they tripled the interest on that sucker just because they can. (Should've read the fine print, eh sucker?) _Really _bad news is maybe in the category of hearing that one's pet cat is dead after being run over by a rather large vehicle. To go one better (or one worse), consider _really, _really bad news—like about how Grandpa Gipper just up and died. Yup, Grandpa Gipper had a heart-attack while driving that rather large vehicle. Guess what else happened? When he died, his sorry excuse for a corpse put pedal to the metal and made the car run over one's pet cat named Mr. Snugglepaws! (Talk about driving with a lead foot. Make that a _dead _foot, ha-ha. _Bartender, make that a dead foot with a shot of rum!_) Guess what else, about that credit-card? It wasn't paid on time because of personal scheduling convolutions around arranging a funeral for one body and disposal of the other. Given how Grandpa Gipper—or his _corpse—_did a dirty deed, Mr. Snugglepaws would be getting the full and proper funeral. Who cares about the Gippster? Let grandpa get tossed out with the trash. But don't dump 'em with the clothes on. Strip him buck-naked and sell those pricey clothes for quarters to use at the Laundromat and some groovy books to read while doing clothes there. And in some realities, that's actually allowed by the laws, dumping dead bodies in the trash. Then we've got those realities where dead folks get eaten with the full blessing of those laws—which is somewhat beside the point but not too far from it.

But anyway, back to the issue of back-to-back bad news. A credit card, a cat and a coronary, it's math so simple that even a caveman could do it without running out of fingers. That's a trio perfectly in line with that whole bad-news-in-threes stuff. _You and me and the devil makes three, _went a song from a while ago—grammatically incorrect as it was.

What in tarnation does this have to do with life, the universe or anything at all? You see, the above-mentioned little series of vignettes sounds an awful lot like what happened to a certain female co-worker of a certain cute nineteen-year-old girl. Meg, yes _Meg_, the slender blonde co-worker with a strong resemblance to a human version of Barbie. That young lady was not feeling so buoyant and pretty at the moment. Instead of wearing her usual revealing outfits which were cut short or tight down _there _and tended to be tight and a little unbuttoned up _there_, Meg was dressed like a tired frump. Her outfit was baggy. Those wrinkled beige pants looked like the kind worn by depressed celebrities in the candid-celebrity shots that the tabloid magazines keep getting, those pictures arranged alongside pages with images of the alien-created love-child of Jason Voorhees and that squid-lipped lady who keeps getting caught adopting kids from poor countries and giving them names befitting one-eared mutant sewer scrubbers from Dimension-X. Meg's top was worth a rant all its own—a top was a big baggy sweater that looked like four other people could climb into that thing and ride out another global warming-induced record-breaking hurricane season. And for once, Meg's footwear consisted of sneakers—not having changed out of her exercise footwear that morning. Good thing too, because Meg was going to be doing some running soon enough.

With sneakers on her feet and big baggy celebrity-letting-it-all-out clothes on the rest of her, there was something Meg was not wearing today. That would be makeup. No makeup was on her face, because makeup would have run when tears went down her face. Thin people in times of mourning can sometimes have that really sunken-eyed look when their lower eye-lids get all puffy and dark while the space around their eyes, looking like natural eye-shadow of sorts.

About those vignettes of someone's grandpa dying, the corpse driving the car over a cat, and then there being a credit bill big enough to sink America's budget for another thousand years. No, it wasn't true that her grandfather died while driving a rather large vehicle and croaked while driving. Actually, what happened was…Meg's grandfather didn't die until _after _he stepped out of his rather pricey car. That was _after _his car's tires altered the shape of a certain feline. And unlike that little above-mentioned fictitious anecdote, the tabby in question wasn't named Mr. Snugglepaws. That was because Meg's cat was named _Mr_. _Snugglepuss. _So grandpa ran over a _Snugglepuss _instead of a _Snugglepaws_, big whoop.

It was a big whoop to Meg, that's what! Her grandfather was not sympathetic. The old codger was anti-sympathetic. Hell! When a man came from a lifestyle making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for himself in making millions of dollars a week for other people, a man thinks he has a God-given right to make Hell for everybody else on Earth. And so the Hell what if his car's wheels made Mr. Snugglepuss' (_Snugglepuss, Snugglepaws… I don't give a flying fork about your forking furball, Meg!_) guts go squirting! Those guts went squirting out of the cat's little cat-butt and his little cat-mouth _and _his big cute eye-sockets when his eyes absolutely _popped _out of his fuzzy little feline noggin. Mr. Snugglepuss' insides became outsides when they exited both ends of his kitty digestive tract, his brains ejecting as well when the canopies of the eyeballs were shot. (One could almost imagine the left and right hemispheres of the kitty's brain—co-pilots of a feline body—saying something like, _Direct hit! We're punchin' out!_)

While pretty blonde Meg was standing there and bawling her own eyes out in front of her pretty condominium townhouse, having stood there and waited for grandpa to arrive and see the cat-based tragedy unfold, big old ugly Grandpa Gipper kept standing there and still yelling, dressed in that same kind of tailored ten thousand-dollar black business power-suit he wore every day of his financial management career. He was getting all red in the face while yelling about _that damned cat _that should've been _damned sensible enough to move its damned lazy cat-ass out of the damned way! Stupid cat! He had it coming too! _

Getting all angry and yelling is not good for anybody—not even people in their thirties, their forties, or their fifties or sixties. Grandpa was in his eighties. Let's see… Blood pressure went up, went up too high, him getting red in the face, then that face becomes decidedly grayish while a hand goes to the chest as cardiac arrest sets in. The Gipper's ticker just couldn't take the pressure of someone who spent much of his life yelling and crying over stock-tickers between meals of too-expensive food and drinking too much expensive wine at fancy restaurants. (Now you see, this is where sexism plays in. If it had been a _female _complaining, they would call it _bitching._) Alright, just to be equally obnoxious to both official sexes, we'll say that Grandpa Gipper was bitching. The dude would've been better off eating roast dog instead of the heavily salted stuff they served alongside glasses of liquid made from the rotten grape-juice that kills brain cells and rots the liver. Now that's why they call it _rot-gut. _It's not as if alcohol leads to the direct bacterial decomposition of internal organs, but all kinds of tissue damage get done anyway.

Now _all _of Grandpa Gipper's brain cells and his internal organs were dead…as were both hemispheres of Mr. Snugglepuss when the before-mentioned ejected from of his eye-sockets in a manner similar to how fighter pilots will eject from a jet that took a critical hit. Grandpa Gipper's once-angry brain was so quiet and peaceful, along with his poor old stock market stress-abused heart, and the lungs he used to yell at Meg just as those lungs were used in serving the dark side, bellowing out hatred at so many economic underlings. There would be no more yelling from Grandpa Gipper anymore, not in this lifetime, because dead people don't care. Being dead can have a very calming effect.

Speaking of gone people… The glass-and-steel doors of this bookstore opened up, and in walked two dark-haired girls in mall clothes. Meg stood up and took in sight of these two female strangers who maybe weren't fully strangers. Though their close-fitting clothes shouted _mall rat_, their straight dark hair lent an air of another kind of beauty.

Both of them approached the counter, both girls regarded Meg behind this counter. Said the girl on the left, "We'd say _good afternoon, _but things aren't exactly good, huh?"

Added the girl on the right, her voice and face perfectly identical, "Nope! If her floppy clothes mean anything, I'd say her emotional state isn't exactly in the best of condition."

It took this long for Meg to recognize the girl on the left. Or was it the girl on the right? The body was the same. Or rather, their _bodies_ were the same. So were the clothes clinging to those bodies—tight jeans and middie tops on nineteen-year-old girls who looked fit to fight. Even the sneakers were the same. But the hairstyles… It's funny how a change in hairstyle can make a girl look like a totally different person—changing the outline of what is revealed in the face, altering the shape of the head. That's _girls _in this case. Changing hairstyle doesn't change voices, though.

Dye those heads of hair blonde and add some fluffy curls to the ends, and you get… "Heather?" asked Meg, looking at the one on the left, then the one on the right.

Which was which? That failed to matter. They were _both _Heather—both girls of the same mind-set. Sharing that mind-set, both of them were of the same purpose and intents. And their intents were _especially _far from anything good for the blonde-haired bitch who troubled them for so cursably long. This wasn't so hard to believe because they had already done quite a bit to Meg's life already.

Said the dark-haired Heather on the left, "I'd say something like _expressing condolences_ and all that, but that'd be a lie. And who likes liars? Your grandpa was probably one of the biggest damned liars in the world too. So be happy he's taking a dirt nap! It's one less lying bastard in the world, lying down until his corpse gets all rotten and smooshy as his el-cheapo coffin gets bio-degraded. He _did _get a wooden coffin, right? Cheap bastard to the mortal end. He'd probably be late to his own funeral if it'd save him a penny." A grin. "He _was _late, wasn't he?"

"Oh, dear sister! Is it not cruel to speak ill of the dead?" went the Heather on the right, her voice being just _so-o-o _melodramatic.

The back of her left hand went to her forehead, the way that bad actresses in old movies pretended to be near fainting. If this was an old-time book, they would say _swoon._ Truth was, women back then actually _swooned _because their bodices were laced too tight, squeezing their insides, not because they were emotionally weaker than men—as was the explanation. (At least those bodices weren't tight enough to make brains yank the _eject _lever to exit the canopy of the skull_._)

That same Heather smiled and added, "I've been doing something Meg doesn't do too often. That is, I've been thinking… How cruel do we have to be before we're officially _bitches_?"

"I'm not sure, but we're getting there in a hot hurry," went the dark-haired Heather on the left. "It's too bad we weren't there when Meg's cat bit the big one…so we could _laugh. _Now that'd add _beaucoup _points to our bitch-score right then and there." Leaning closer to her sister and saying in a low voice, "_It was probably really awesome, too. This talk is getting pretty crunchy, huh?_ "

"It'd be even more awesome and crunchy if dead grandpas made crunchy sounds when their hearts explode," went the Heather on the right. "Which sounds more awesome when it dies, a cat or a human?"

"Who cares? Humans, cats… They're all a bunch of forkin' meat-puppets!" said the Heather on the left, starting to bang her left fist onto the bookstore sales counter like a sadistic cheer. "_Meat-puppets! Meat-puppets!_" _Bang-bang-bang! _"_Meat-puppets! Meat-puppets!_" _Bang-bang-bang! _

"You are whole-_heartedly _correct," agreed the Heather on the right. Hitting on the word _heartedly _was—of course—a dig at what happened to Meg's grandpa and his ticker—the grandpa which would yell no more, his ticker which would tick no more.

"Check this out," said the Heather on the left. "Let's see how well this meat-puppet likes her protein strings getting yanked?"

_Thwack! _Meg felt the slap across the face and wondered who delivered it. Then Meg saw how her _own _left hand had done the seemingly impossible trick.

With all of that mentioning of tickers, how was _Meg's _ticker in the course of all of this? It was absolutely racing. Her eyes were wide-open (_e-e-eject_) while her lower lip was all quivery. Then Meg's eyes were squinched up tight as her voice seemed to explode in this mall bookstore. "_Not funny, Heather! Not funny!_" The distraught girl suddenly made a dash around the sales counter, running between the shelves of books and ran sobbingly for the glass-and-metal doors out.

Those were doors which wouldn't open. Sounds of sobs met with sounds of the doors being rattled as Meg was trying to get the Hell out of this store before her already on-edge sanity was destroyed by these antics. And…nope, the doors still wouldn't open. What's going on here? The doors weren't locked because locked doors wouldn't give at all. These doors gave just a little bit, just enough to tantalize Meg into thinking they'd open. And Meg didn't think Heather had the key to lock the doors. Not locked mechanically, it was more like the doors were being _held _closed.

That didn't make a lot of sense because Meg couldn't see anybody doing the holding. But that was exactly what it felt like. It was like a set of hands was holding directly onto the handles and wasn't letting go. Then there was the fog on the glass as if somebody was breathing heavily onto the glass on the other side—making those little patches of what kids call _fog _on glass. (Fog is actually condensed water vapor in emulsion and _not _condensed spit-air on glass, but what do kids know, more intent on staring at their text messaging rather than the lessons in front of them?) It was the kind of wet patch of seeming fogginess which allowed a person to take a finger and draw temporary smiley-faces or some shenanigans like that.

No mischievous kid was on the opposite side of the bookstore's glass doors, though. Nobody was there. But _somebody _had to be there. Somebody had to be breathing onto the glass and was holding the doors closed while _not letting her out! _And…was something growling?

"Hey! Those doors are ours! You break 'em, you bought 'em!" came a shout from one of the Heathers, back over there by the sales counter. "Yeah, that's right! The boss-lady was too kind to give us this store after we gave her a few hundred thousand for her troubles. Hah, what's a few hundred thousand? We've got money to burn, baby!"

Continued the other Heather or perhaps with the same Heather talking, "Dad's books are making money all of a sudden, and people can't help but giving us hot deals. We're rich, bitch! So you might not want to get on our nerves now. Just _let go _of the bad attitude you had before."

Meg suddenly tumbled backwards, wheeling her arms in the air and falling onto her own butt. It wasn't that anybody or anything unseen hit her. It was just how whatever was holding the doors closed suddenly _let go_.

Whatever. The doors were open now. Meg had a golden opportunity to get the Hell out of here. That opportunity was one taken in a hurry—Meg's own sneakers being put to athletic use with her running away.

Both Heathers stared at the double doors through which Meg had fled. Meg likely would not be back to work for a while. If Meg did return, though, then some actions performed by unseen servants could be used to weaken her hold on her sanity. If Meg did not return, then her male co-worker and sometimes love-interest would make for especially interesting moments as his sanity was chipped away too, coming under attack by creatures he could not see even as they performed acts he could see and feel. Then there would be the inhabitants of the apartment building who maybe said things about her. They too would come to know the unseen servants. After that, there would be the landlord of the apartment building, the entire building. It would not be the Heathers who would experience pain and suffering. This time, it was the world's chance to feel the pain—no more being grabbed or slapped, no more being hurt. Things are going to be very different around here.


End file.
